Text Encoding
Encoding is the way characters are organized to hold a meaning while being transmitted, stored or manipulated.
Encoding applies to PHP scripts, which should be UTF-8 encoded, although it might support other formats.
Encoding applies to incoming and outgoing data.
Encoding operations are provided with ext/mbstring, ext/iconv and ext/intl extensions.
Encoding is also used for code: the source is encoded when it is transformed in an unreadable yet still executable form.
Encoding is also called a character set.
<?php
$text = 'This is the Euro symbol €.';
echo 'Original : ', $text, PHP_EOL;
echo 'TRANSLIT : ', iconv('UTF-8', 'ISO-8859-1//TRANSLIT', $text), PHP_EOL;
echo 'IGNORE : ', iconv('UTF-8', 'ISO-8859-1//IGNORE', $text), PHP_EOL;
echo 'Plain : ', iconv('UTF-8', 'ISO-8859-1', $text), PHP_EOL;
?>
See Also
- Useful Encoding and decoding Functions You Need to Know
- Character Encoding for PHP Developers: Unicode, UTF-8 and ASCII