can recode_string auto-convert to UTF-8?

When I discovered this page:

http://us2.php.net/recode_string

I thought this function might solve my problems.

This page says recode_string understands the UTF-8 charset:

http://www.delorie.com/gnu/docs/recode/recode_30.html

I came up with a little test, you can see the code below, and I put it
up on my server:

http://www.publicdomainsoftware.org/testRecode.php

Sadly, my server doesn't seem to have the function recode_string
built-in with PHP. We are leasing a server from Rackspace. I could ask
them to rebuild PHP with that function in it, at a cost of like $120,
but I'd like to know if it would work first.

I wanted to write some very strange characters in a Microsoft Word
document, using every rare and bizzare character I could find, then I'd
copy and paste that to the textarea in the form below, and then I'd see
if it could be output without garbage characters as UTF-8.

But, sadly, I can't run the test on my server. So does anyone know if
this would work?





<?php


$textToTest = $_POST["textToTest"];
$formSubmitted = $_POST["formSubmitted"];

if ($formSubmitted) {
if ($textToTest) {
if (function_exists("headers_sent")) {
$sent = headers_sent();
if (!$sent) header("Content-type:text/html;charset=UTF-8");
}
if (function_exists("recode_string")) {
$result = recode_string("UTF-8", $textToTest);
} else {
echo "<p>function doesn't exist ";
}
echo "<p>here is the resulting text:</p> <p>$result</p> ";
} else {
echo "couldn't find the text ";
}

}


?>




<form method="post" action="testRecode.php">
<p>type words here:</p>
<textarea name="textToTest"> Type something here </textarea>

<br><br>
<input type="hidden" name="formSubmitted" value="true">

<input type="submit">
</form>

On 27 May 2005 13:08:32 -0700, lkrubner@geocities.com wrote:

>When I discovered this page:
>
>http://us2.php.net/recode_string
>
>I thought this function might solve my problems.

Which problem?

>This page says recode_string understands the UTF-8 charset:
>
>http://www.delorie.com/gnu/docs/recode/recode_30.html
>
>I came up with a little test, you can see the code below, and I put it
>up on my server:
>
>http://www.publicdomainsoftware.org/testRecode.php
>
>Sadly, my server doesn't seem to have the function recode_string
>built-in with PHP. We are leasing a server from Rackspace. I could ask
>them to rebuild PHP with that function in it, at a cost of like $120,
>but I'd like to know if it would work first.
>
>I wanted to write some very strange characters in a Microsoft Word
>document, using every rare and bizzare character I could find, then I'd
>copy and paste that to the textarea in the form below, and then I'd see
>if it could be output without garbage characters as UTF-8.

Remember the Joel article you posted? It's all down to the key sentence in
there; if you don't know the original encoding of your data you are stuffed.

>But, sadly, I can't run the test on my server. So does anyone know if
>this would work?
>
> if (function_exists("recode_string")) {
> $result = recode_string("UTF-8", $textToTest);

recode_string converts from one encoding to another.

You've specified just one encoding. What's it supposed to do? From a brief
read of the manual it seems to default to Latin-1 a.k.a ISO-8859-1 if you don't
specify one of the encodings.

If it's not in ISO-8859-1 in the first place, the results won't be "correct".

This function doesn't seem any different, as far as I can see, to
http://uk.php.net/manual/en/function...t-encoding.php except it's more
obscure.

--
Andy Hassall / <andy@andyh.co.uk> / <http://www.andyh.co.uk>
<http://www.andyhsoftware.co.uk/space> Space: disk usage analysis tool

My apologies. I didn't read it well enough. As you say, "if you don't
know the original encoding of your data you are stuffed"