"mbstring" - Multi-Byte String Extension

PHP Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples - Version 4.20, by Dr. Herong Yang

PHP Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟"mbstring" Extension and Non-ASCII Encoding Management

∟"mbstring" - Multi-Byte String Extension

This section describes the mbstring (multi-byte string) extension library designed to help you manipulate non-ASCII character strings encoded in various encoding schemas like Unicode UTF-8.

PHP offers a nice extension called "mbstring (multi-byte string)" to help you manage non-ASCII strings. Here are the features of "mbstring":

Provides multibyte specific string functions that properly detect the beginning or ending of a multibyte character. For example, mb_strlen() and mb_split().
Handles character encoding conversion between the possible encoding pairs.
Offers automatic encoding conversion for HTTP input and output.
Supports 'function overloading' feature which enables you to add multibyte awareness to regular string functions. For example, you can overload substr() with mb_substr(), so that calling substr() is really calling mb_substr().

"mbstring" extension needs to installed and configured by updating the php.ini file. To get started with "mbstring" features, I modified my php.ini as:

extension=php_mbstring.dll
...
mbstring.language = Neutral
mbstring.internal_encoding = UTF-8
mbstring.http_input = pass
mbstring.http_output = pass
mbstring.encoding_translation = Off
mbstring.detect_order = auto

Note that:

"mbstring.language = Neutral" is really setting the language to UTF-8. I like to work with Unicode UTF-8 encoding.
"mbstring.http_input = pass" means no decoding when receiving HTTP input. I like to manage the decoding myself inside my PHP script.
"mbstring.http_output = pass" means no encoding when generating HTTP output. I like to manage the encoding myself inside my PHP script.

Last update: 2019.

Table of Contents

About This Book

Introduction and Installation of PHP 7.3

PHP Script File Syntax

PHP Data Types and Data Literals

Variables, References, and Constants

Expressions, Operations and Type Conversions

Conditional Statements - "if" and "switch"

Loop Statements - "while", "for", and "do ... while"

Function Declaration, Arguments, and Return Values

Arrays - Ordered Maps