# Status of Multibyte support in PHP - Thread: https://externals.io/message/12437 - Original archive: https://news-web.php.net/php.internals/12437 - Started by Al Baker on 2004-08-27T20:15:21+00:00 - Messages: 15 - Reply by email to internals@lists.php.net - More for agents: search with https://externals.io/search.md?q={query} · JSON API at https://externals.io/api · documentation at https://externals.io/llms.txt --- ## #12437 — Al Baker — 2004-08-27T20:15:21+00:00 URL: https://externals.io/message/12437#12437 Hi, I'm trying to find status on the multibyte support in PHP. The manual shows the functions in mbstring to be experimental and it's hard to find evidence of how stable it really is. Is this natively supported in PHP after 4.3.x? Thanks, Al --- ## #12440 — Moriyoshi Koizumi — 2004-08-27T20:52:16+00:00 URL: https://externals.io/message/12437#12440 · In reply to: #12437 Hi, > I'm trying to find status on the multibyte support in PHP. The manual > shows the functions in mbstring to be experimental and it's hard to > find > evidence of how stable it really is. Which manual says that mbstring is still experimental? :) it was marked "not experimental" two years ago. No matter what that says, and no matter who says it's experimental, it's been used for a fairly long time by lots of people and I've never heard of a serious flaw / deficiency in its functionality. There are also some alternatives that'd be worth paying attention to: - PHP5 iconv extension - php-i18n project led by l0t3k > Is this natively supported in PHP after 4.3.x? While the extension is there, PHP doesn't yet natively supports multibyte encodings in the sense that the language implementation always works singlebyte-wise and doesn't automagicallytake care of these fancy characters. Moriyoshi --- ## #12443 — Sean Coates — 2004-08-27T23:17:08+00:00 URL: https://externals.io/message/12437#12443 · In reply to: #12442 Are these functions in fact non-experimental? If so, I will remove the warning from the mb_* functions in the manual. S Al Baker wrote: > Thanks for the confirmation. The experimental warning appears on any of > the individual help files for mbstring (e.g. mb_ereg). > > > […] --- ## #12442 — Al Baker — 2004-08-27T23:38:47+00:00 URL: https://externals.io/message/12437#12442 · In reply to: #12440 Thanks for the confirmation. The experimental warning appears on any of the individual help files for mbstring (e.g. mb_ereg). Do you know if the regular expression support lets you match alpha and numeric content like you would normally? Al > Hi, > > > > […] > > Which manual says that mbstring is still experimental? :) it was marked > "not experimental" two years ago. > > No matter what that says, and no matter who says it's experimental, > it's been used for a fairly long time by lots of people and I've > never heard of a serious flaw / deficiency in its functionality. > > There are also some alternatives that'd be worth paying attention to: > > - PHP5 iconv extension > - php-i18n project led by l0t3k > > > […] > > While the extension is there, PHP doesn't yet natively supports > multibyte > encodings in the sense that the language implementation always works > singlebyte-wise > and doesn't automagicallytake care of these fancy characters. > > Moriyoshi --- ## #12444 — Moriyoshi Koizumi — 2004-08-28T11:02:03+00:00 URL: https://externals.io/message/12437#12444 · In reply to: #12442 Hi, > Thanks for the confirmation. The experimental warning appears on any > of > the individual help files for mbstring (e.g. mb_ereg). Hmm, warnings seem to persist in manual pages of the multibyte regular expression functions. I'll remove them later :) > Do you know if the regular expression support lets you match alpha and > numeric content like you would normally? Maybe sorts of character classes don't work as you expect, because they lack comprehensive collation support that fully conforms to the Unicode specification. It's stable I think, but actually not complete yet. > Al Moriyoshi --- ## #12445 — Moriyoshi Koizumi — 2004-08-28T11:03:04+00:00 URL: https://externals.io/message/12437#12445 · In reply to: #12443 > Are these functions in fact non-experimental? If so, I will remove the > warning from the mb_* functions in the manual. Yep, definitely. Thanks in advance :) Moriyoshi --- ## #12446 — Derick Rethans — 2004-08-28T12:51:06+00:00 URL: https://externals.io/message/12437#12446 · In reply to: #12442 > Thanks for the confirmation. The experimental warning appears on any of > the individual help files for mbstring (e.g. mb_ereg). Can you file a "Documentation" problem for that on bugs.php.net please? regards, Derick -- Derick Rethans http://derickrethans.nl | http://ez.no | http://xdebug.org --- ## #12447 — Dave Barr — 2004-08-28T13:35:03+00:00 URL: https://externals.io/message/12437#12447 · In reply to: #12446 Derick Rethans wrote: > > > > > […] > > > Can you file a "Documentation" problem for that on bugs.php.net please? Don't bother, I have fixed this in the documentation. > regards, > Derick Dave --- ## #12448 — Rasmus Lerdorf — 2004-08-28T16:24:29+00:00 URL: https://externals.io/message/12437#12448 · In reply to: #12444 > Maybe sorts of character classes don't work as you expect, because > they lack comprehensive collation support that fully conforms to the > Unicode > specification. It's stable I think, but actually not complete yet. ICU has gotten a lot more modular these days, so it may be possible to pick out smaller pieces of it to address things like this. Last time we looked at it some 4+ years ago, it was a huge all-or-nothing beast. There was also an icu extension proposed on pecl-dev recently. -Rasmus --- ## #12453 — Mehdi Achour — 2004-08-28T20:29:55+00:00 URL: https://externals.io/message/12437#12453 · In reply to: #12452 The warning will be gone after the next build of the manual. Mehdi Al Baker wrote: > So, all the mb_* functions will have the experimental removed? I see a > few that still have it, or is that just the mirrors not up to date yet? > > Al > > > > > […] --- ## #12452 — Al Baker — 2004-08-28T21:17:47+00:00 URL: https://externals.io/message/12437#12452 · In reply to: #12447 So, all the mb_* functions will have the experimental removed? I see a few that still have it, or is that just the mirrors not up to date yet? Al > Derick Rethans wrote: > > […] > > Don't bother, I have fixed this in the documentation. > > > […] > > Dave --- ## #12460 — Derick Rethans — 2004-08-30T06:11:04+00:00 URL: https://externals.io/message/12437#12460 · In reply to: #12452 > So, all the mb_* functions will have the experimental removed? I see a > few that still have it, or is that just the mirrors not up to date yet? I'd go for the `iconv()` functions as you need to external extension for this in PHP 5 (it's enabled by default). Derick -- Derick Rethans http://derickrethans.nl | http://ez.no | http://xdebug.org --- ## #12464 — Adam Q — 2004-08-30T11:08:50+00:00 URL: https://externals.io/message/12437#12464 · In reply to: #12460 Actually I noticed that the Zend Engine 2 page [1] mentions "Internationalization" as a _new_ feature of PHP 5... Has there been big changes to the way PHP5 handles i18n? [1] http://www.zend.com/zend/zend-engine-summary.php Thanks, Adam > > > > […] > > I'd go for the `iconv()` functions as you need to external extension for > this in PHP 5 (it's enabled by default). > > Derick > > -- > Derick Rethans > http://derickrethans.nl | http://ez.no | http://xdebug.org --- ## #12465 — Derick Rethans — 2004-08-30T11:14:22+00:00 URL: https://externals.io/message/12437#12465 · In reply to: #12464 > Actually I noticed that the Zend Engine 2 page [1] mentions > "Internationalization" as a _new_ feature of PHP 5... > Has there been big changes to the way PHP5 handles i18n? > > [1] http://www.zend.com/zend/zend-engine-summary.php That paragraph is utter bollocks if you ask me. Derick -- Derick Rethans http://derickrethans.nl | http://ez.no | http://xdebug.org --- ## #12468 — Adam Maccabee Trachtenberg — 2004-08-30T14:09:36+00:00 URL: https://externals.io/message/12437#12468 · In reply to: #12465 > > > > […] > > That paragraph is utter bollocks if you ask me. This looks like a *really* old document. It still lists the possibility of MI in PHP 5. Neither MI or i18n has been added to ZE 2, and there haven't been talks about them in months, if not years. :) -adam -- adam@trachtenberg.com author of o'reilly's "upgrading to php 5" and "php cookbook" avoid the holiday rush, buy your copies today!