PHP Detect if non-english

Question

I am using these code to check if a string is in English or not.

<?php
    $string="で書くタッチイベント (フ";

    if(!preg_match('/[^\W_ ] /',$string)) {
        echo "Please enter English words only:(";
    } else {
        echo "OK, English Detected!";
    }
?>

It cant provide perfect result because string like "some english text で書くタッチイベント (フ" this also detects as English language, any idea?

Define "english". For letters only the trivial `/^[a-zA-Z]*$/` would only match "english". — Jon, Apr 10 '13 at 08:59
Do you mean 'actual English' or do you mean 'containing more Latin characters than kanji/kana'? — Rup, Apr 10 '13 at 09:02

score 36 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 10 '13 at 09:06

36

Try this (please note you need mbstring php module installed):

<?php
    $string="で書くタッチイベント (フ";

    if(strlen($string) != mb_strlen($string, 'utf-8'))
    { 
        echo "Please enter English words only:(";
    }
    else {
        echo "OK, English Detected!";
    }
?>

answered Apr 10 '13 at 09:06

Edson Medina

9,862
3
40
51

1

Seems not working... http://ideone.com/obm95F – Hiren Pandya Apr 10 '13 at 09:08
Sorry, it was missing utf-8 encode in mb_strlen. Should work now. – Edson Medina Apr 10 '13 at 09:11
Perfect... Nice work... – Hiren Pandya Apr 10 '13 at 09:13
2

Anyway, this is a must read for every programmer: http://kunststube.net/encoding/ – Edson Medina Apr 10 '13 at 09:18
thanks... good use of utf-8 :) – Jessica Lingmn Apr 10 '13 at 12:10
Warning: Some websites rewrite quotation marks to their Unicode variant. Which will trip this as non-English. Example: http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/201c/index.htm – Reactgular Jan 13 '17 at 14:07
Here's a good reference: http://billposer.org/Linguistics/Computation/UnicodeRanges.html – Reactgular Jan 13 '17 at 14:19

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

0

You can not detect the language from the character type. And there are no foolproof ways to do this.

With any method, you're just doing an educated guess. From: Detect language from string in PHP

Though some of the below articles may get handy in case..

http://papermashup.com/php-language-detection/

https://github.com/BruceJillis/PHP-Language-Detection

http://phpir.com/language-detection-with-n-grams/

Hope it helps..

edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

Community

1
1

answered Apr 10 '13 at 09:00

Hiren Pandya

989
1
7
20

1

Does this answer say anything not copy/pasted from that other question? – Jon Apr 10 '13 at 09:01
Why do you guys downvote his comments? It's absolutely true... – Chris Apr 10 '13 at 09:01
@Chris I did not downvote, but comments should not be posted as answers. Also, if Hiren believes this question is already answered elsewhere, than he/she should mark the OP as duplicate. – Boaz Apr 10 '13 at 09:03
@Chris: Because there is already a mechanism for directing users to answers that someone else has already provided: voting to close the question as a duplicate. Even if you don't want to do that, instead of *copy/pasting* from the answers of others one can always leave a comment linking to them. – Jon Apr 10 '13 at 09:03
Courtesy has been given... And I had some articles so shared as the code is much larger.. – Hiren Pandya Apr 10 '13 at 09:03
@HirenPandya If you believe you have further to contribute to this topic, than you should post a new answer to the original question and mark the current question as duplicate. – Boaz Apr 10 '13 at 09:05
I can not mark it as duplicate.. Rather than down voting it and discourage the OP, I had some of the articles which is not posted in the given stackoverflow link.. So posted. But next time, I will keep this in mind... Thank you. – Hiren Pandya Apr 10 '13 at 09:06
@HirenPandya Why can't you flag the OP? – Boaz Apr 10 '13 at 09:07
I do not have that privilege to perform mentioned action... – Hiren Pandya Apr 10 '13 at 09:09
@HirenPandya Flagging for moderator attention is a privilege given to any user with 15 reputation points and up. – Boaz Apr 10 '13 at 09:09
But it is not available to me though.. Tried so many times.. People here, told me that you should not post only link to the duplicate question so I put some my efforts to provide a better answer... – Hiren Pandya Apr 10 '13 at 09:11

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 10 '13 at 09:10

0

if(!preg_match('/[^\w ]/u',$string))

answered Apr 10 '13 at 09:10

Amir

4,089
4
16
28

PHP Detect if non-english

3 Answers3