Array key portability

Hey all, in internal PHP code we use add_assoc_xxx to populate associate arrays, and all keys (i assume) are ASCII. If we want to support portable code, what needs to be done to allow $val = $arr['some literal']; to function the same irrespective of unicode_semantics ? For BC purposes, we couldnt use all unicode keys internally, but this would mean the end user would have to do just that to ensure code works fine in all cases. In any case we need add_assoc_xxx functions with the capability of specifying unicode keys... l0t3k