backslashes, string replacement, mysql_real_escape_strings and languages

Ok, let's get this straightened out, please. I'm coming up with little annoyances like text with é & the like being displayed and not displayed, having to enter it to get it displayed, and sometimes seeing the code rather than the accented character. And then there is preg_replace! When I have to use foreign characters and I often do in several languages, preg removes the & and the spaces that I don't want in a string but it also replaces the foreign language accent formatting(e.g. î with icirc). Now that is annoying. I then have to replace the space&space with space/space and omit the preg_replace. That's a workaround... but that prevents filtering out lost spaces. And how does all that relate to latin1 and utf8_general? I'm setting up my databases with utf8_general... so, now what? Should I be reverting to latin1(or is it 15) I don't recall... Is there a way to fix this cross language problem? Ooooooooh, boy. :'( -- Hervé Kempf: "Pour sauver la planète, sortez du capitalisme." ------------------------------------------------------------- Phil Jourdan --- pj@ptahhotep.com http://www.ptahhotep.com http://www.chiccantine.com/andypantry.php