utf-8

[rayzun]

why or how does PHP see language characters

array 1 = 書店員 バイト

$utf8 = "array[1]";
$utf8 = str_replace (" ", "", $utf8); // will not work

htmlentities(urlencode($utf8)) // %E6%9B%B8%E5%BA%97%E5%93%A1-%E3%83%90%E3%82%A4%E3%83%88

[drew010]

try
$utf8 = str_replace(0x00A0, '', $utf8);

00A0 is the hex code for a no break space in the unicode character table