mb_substr()

Hi gang: From another list, a person posted: "I want to use PHP's mb_substr() function to grab the first letter of a UTF-8 encoded word (in Czech) being pulled out of MySQL. If I use the plain substr() the data gets garbled and I get a ? symbol in the browser. My host says that in order to get multibyte string functions I'd have to compile my own copy of PHP. That's getting a little deeper than I want to for one function on one page. Does anyone know what I could do as a workaround?" I've tried to help, but it appears beyond me. Anyone have any advice I could pass on? Thanks. tedd -- ------- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com