Handling UTF-8 string in PHP 5.3

Question

We are using some third-party php library functions and have some difficulties converting utf-8 strings.

After some experiment, this is what we got so far:

(1) The following will print the correct unicode word (it's 'one' word) in browser(we use Firefox):

$s = "\345\244\247";
echo $s;

大 <-- (prints out a correct unicode word)

(2) However, the library function will return something like this:

$s2 = "\\345\\244\\247";
echo $s2;

\345\244\247  <-- the print out will contain escape character so the unicode isn't showing correctly

(3) So the question is, is there a php function capable of doing this, converting $s2 to the correct unicode form (like $s)?

Thanks.

The environment is PHP 5.3.

Answer 1

Something like http://ideone.com/Owl2a3 :

function _conv($oct) {
    return chr(octdec($oct[1]));
}

$es = "\\345\\244\\247";
$es = preg_replace_callback('@\\\\(\d{3})@', '_conv', $es);

echo $es;

outputs 大

Answer 2

the problem is, that you're escaping the slashes!

use this:

$s2 = str_replace("\\","\",$s2);