iconv

I need to convert Japanese characters to UTF-8. I tried using this
command on a PHP 5.0.3 server:
$out = iconv("iso-2022-jp", "utf-8", $in);
But it does not work. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

(Note: I also tried this, unsuccessfully, with Chinese characters:
$out = iconv("gb2312", "utf-8", $in);
)

pbuchheit@hotmail.com wrote:
> I need to convert Japanese characters to UTF-8. I tried using this
> command on a PHP 5.0.3 server:
> $out = iconv("iso-2022-jp", "utf-8", $in);
> But it does not work. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

You might start by mentioning what happens. Do you get an error message?
An empty string? A garbled string? FALSE?

Can you confirm that the iconv module is built-in or loaded? Can you
confirm that the input really is iso-2022-jp, and not some other
encoding such as Shift-JIS? Can you confirm that the input is valid?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

That's why I added the note about gb2312 - I'm SURE my input is in
simplified Chinese, but I get NULL output with the PHP command $out =
iconv("gb2312", "utf-8", $in);

My PHP 4 ISP activated ICONV, and I tried this also on a PHP 5.0.3
server. When you say 'confirm that the iconv module is built-in or
loaded,' are you suggesting that something else might need to be done?

Thanks.

pbuchheit@hotmail.com wrote:
> That's why I added the note about gb2312 - I'm SURE my input is in
> simplified Chinese, but I get NULL output with the PHP command $out =
> iconv("gb2312", "utf-8", $in);

You haven't provided any sample data or a test program or described the
system it's running on (OS, version, etc), so it's hard to reproduce. :)

Try this program:

<?php
$in =
urldecode('%CE%AC%BB%F9%B0%D9%BF%C6%A3%AC%D7%D4%D3 %C9%B5%C4%B0%D9%BF%C6%C8%AB%CA%E9');
$out = iconv("gb2312", "utf-8", $in);
echo urlencode($out);
?>

The output should be:

%E7%BB%B4%E5%9F%BA%E7%99%BE%E7%A7%91%EF%BC%8C%E8%8 7%AA%E7%94%B1%E7%9A%84%E7%99%BE%E7%A7%91%E5%85%A8% E4%B9%A6

I tested this successfully on PHP 4.3.10 on a Red Hat Linux 9 system.

> My PHP 4 ISP activated ICONV, and I tried this also on a PHP 5.0.3
> server. When you say 'confirm that the iconv module is built-in or
> loaded,' are you suggesting that something else might need to be done?

Check for instance phpinfo() output to make sure iconv is listed
properly. (If it weren't you should get a fatal error as the iconv
function won't be defined, but...)

It's also possible there's something wrong with the iconv library on
your system; see http://www.php.net/iconv
"Supported character sets depend on the iconv implementation of your
system. Note that the iconv function on some systems may not work as
you expect. In such case, it'd be a good idea to install the GNU
libiconv library. It will most likely end up with more consistent results."

Does it fail in the same way on both systems? What OS are they running?
Are only Asian encodings affected, or all encodings? Can you do an iconv
from iso-8859-1 to utf-8, for instance?

You might also try mb_convert_encoding if the mbstring module is enabled.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)