Replace é with e in PHP

Question

Hey, this is my first post on stackoverflow.

I'm trying to replace é with e and other similar special characters. I've tried str_replace() and converting it from UTF-8 to ASCII but nothing seems to work. When I convert it from UTF-8 to anything it just drops the é off. When I use str_replace() it never catches it and the é is still there.

I have a feeling something is wrong internally on our server because my friend tried str_replace() on his server and it worked fine.

Thanks,

Jason Tolhurst

possible duplicate of [Need to convert é to e in PHP](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4125658/need-to-convert-e-to-e-in-php) — Mark Baker, Nov 08 '10 at 17:12

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 08 '10 at 17:07

8

$string = iconv('utf-8','ASCII//IGNORE//TRANSLIT',$string);

answered Nov 08 '10 at 17:07

Wrikken

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yeah that drops the e off the end. – Jason Tolhurst Nov 08 '10 at 17:08
It doesn't here.....Can you reach the command line, and see if both charsets are supported with `iconv -l`? And what does `mb_detect_encoding($string);` say about the probably character set of the string (it might not be utf-8)? – Wrikken Nov 08 '10 at 17:09
I can get there how do I check it? – Jason Tolhurst Nov 08 '10 at 17:11
Oops typed it wrong the first time. Yes both ASCII and UTF-8 are supported. We tested this code and str_replace on another page on the same server and they functions as expected. So something else is wrong here with our script :P Thanks for the help though. – Jason Tolhurst Nov 08 '10 at 17:19
I'd still say the input-charset isn't utf-8 :) What happens if you try one of the usual other input suspects (iso-8859-15, cp1252. etc.)? – Wrikken Nov 08 '10 at 17:21
From the [docs](https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.iconv.php): "If you append the string *//IGNORE*, characters that cannot be represented in the target charset are silently discarded." - I had to remove `//IGNORE` to make it [work](https://rextester.com/GNJG65315) – Paul Spiegel May 22 '19 at 11:06

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 08 '10 at 17:11

5

You can use htmlentities() to convert é to é and then use a regex to pull out the first character after an ampersand.

function RemoveAccents($string) {
    // From http://theserverpages.com/php/manual/en/function.str-replace.php
    $string = htmlentities($string);
    return preg_replace("/&([a-z])[a-z]+;/i", "$1", $string);
}

answered Nov 08 '10 at 17:11

TRiG

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Yay for `€`, `±`, `¼`,`&` and [loads of others](http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-html40-970708/sgml/entities.html), IMHO you're introducing new problems, although the original problem is solved indeed. – Wrikken Nov 08 '10 at 17:15
You're quite right, though that may or may not be a problem, depending on the use-case. – TRiG Nov 08 '10 at 17:16
`$string = preg_replace(array('/ß/', '/&(..)lig;/', '/&([aeioucyAEIOUCY])(uml|acute|ring|cedil|circ|tilde|grave|slash);/', '/&(.)[^;]*;/'), array('ss', "$1", "$1", ""), $string);` – Aistina Nov 08 '10 at 17:30

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited Nov 13 '11 at 16:25

2

See the php manual page for strtr()

The examples on this page deal with exactly your situation.

Hope that helps.

edited Nov 13 '11 at 16:25

Josh

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answered Nov 08 '10 at 17:18

Spudley

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Replace é with e in PHP

3 Answers3

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