Why doesn't mb_ereg() detect Arabic characters?

Question

I have an example from PHP.net to detect Arabic. Why doesn't it work?

$text = 'بيتر هو صبي.'; // arabic
//$text = 'פיטר הוא ילד.'; // hebrew

mb_regex_encoding('UTF-8');

if(mb_ereg('[\x{0600}-\x{06FF}]', $text)) // arabic range
//if(mb_ereg('[\x{0590}-\x{05FF}]', $text)) // hebrew range
{
    echo "Text has some arabic/hebrew characters.";
}
else
{
    echo "Text doesnt have arabic/hebrew characters.";
}

Works for me as well. But why not use `\p{Arabic}` and `\p{Hebrew}` instead? Much more readable. — Jon, Oct 02 '13 at 15:52
@Jon: Though my answer appears to be copied from your comment but I swear I didn't copy. The moment I submitted it I saw your comment saying same thing. — anubhava, Oct 02 '13 at 15:55
It should [work as advertised](http://3v4l.org/CA8ms)... assuming that you save the file as UTF-8. — Álvaro González, Oct 02 '13 at 16:04

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 02 '13 at 15:53

1

You shouldn't rely on character ranges for detecting arabic characters. You can directly use \p{Arabic} for detecting Arabic letters:

Following works fine:

$text = 'بيتر هو صبي.'; // arabic
//$text = 'פיטר הוא ילד.'; // hebrew
if (preg_match('~\p{Arabic}~u', $text))
    echo "Text has some arabic/hebrew characters.";
else
    echo "Text doesnt have arabic/hebrew characters.";

OUTPUT:

Text has some arabic/hebrew characters.

answered Oct 02 '13 at 15:53

anubhava

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There's a small caveat here: `preg_match()` isn't multibyte-safe like `mb_ereg()`. The `u` modifier doesn't change that. See [this question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1766485/are-the-php-preg-functions-multibyte-safe). – NullUserException Oct 02 '13 at 16:03
@NullUserException: Yes that's true. – anubhava Oct 02 '13 at 16:05
why still give me Text doesnt have arabic/hebrew characters. – user1080247 Oct 03 '13 at 07:52

Why doesn't mb_ereg() detect Arabic characters?

1 Answers1

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