problem utf8 characters

[rayzun]

Using 'file_get_contents' to bring in a list of Japanese characters
from a text file I drop them into a array

$array[0] // 大-表

Next array's which contain "-" are split into two var's
It is working BUT
only when I hardcode utf-8 characters

example:

$utf8 = "$array[0]"; // dont work

$utf8 = "大-表"; // works

if(($n = strpos($, '-')) !== false) {
$var1 = substr($utf8, 0, $n-1);
$var2 = substr($utf8, $n);
$var1 = str_replace ("-", "", $var1);
$var2 = str_replace ("-", "", $var2);
echo("$var1."<br>");
echo("$var2."<br>"); }
//output
&#22823;
&#34920;

Im able to work with the utf-8 array's in other scripts using str_replace
however this function I guess is in another format

[vaaaska]

I've been messing around alot lately with Chinese text...

A couple things...maybe this could be of help:

• if you are working on a local machine, it can be hard to trust the encoding results. Try things out on a live webserver...

• is your page utf-8?

• are you 100% sure that your chars in array[0] are encoded properly? It makes sense that when you 'hard code' the characters it works. The code in your array, I bet, is not identical to your hard coded characters (view the source and I bet that's the case).

You might take a look at the multbyte functions in PHP (mb-...).

[rayzun]

thanks vaaaska
Im doing what Im suppose to do

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
is at the top of my page.

This is on a live url and domain.

The output is brought in via a page which is already in Japanese characters. I split them into array.

When I echo array[0] I get : &#22823;&#22618;&#24859;
Also to change from character form to URL form I use:
echo htmlentities(urlencode($array[0])) // %E5%A4%A7%E5%A1%9A%E6%84%9B

This information is being saved in a MySQL table and I can output the characters or urlencode properly.

If I view source this character now looks like this:
大塚愛

Would there be another encode property I should be using
.. unicode scripts ??
also and do you have any nifty scripts for these types of information?