Re: What should we do with utf8_encode and utf8_decode?

From: Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2021 17:22:15 +0000
Subject: Re: What should we do with utf8_encode and utf8_decode?
References: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8  Groups: php.internals 
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On 22/03/2021 16:52, Aleksander Machniak wrote:

On 22.03.2021 16:41, Rowan Tommins wrote:

That code will never do anything useful.

I already proved it is useful, regardless of it's name/intention.



You have proven no such thing. If that function is saving you from errors, it is completely by accident.

The same effect can be achieved using base64_encode() and base64_decode(), or bin2hex() and hex2bin(), or any other function that takes a series of bytes and applies an arbitrary encoding to it.

It could also be achieved by using a binary column type in the database, because the values you have stored are not useful as strings; they might as well be encrypted.

Given the sequence of bytes "\xE3\x82\zB0", which is a valid UTF-8 string representing U+30B0 KATAKANA LETTER GU グ calling utf8_encode() will result in the sequence of bytes "\xC3\xA3\xC2\x82\xC2\xB0", which is the UTF-8 representation of the following Unicode code points:

- U+00E3 LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH TILDE ã
- U+0082 CONTROL: BREAK PERMITTED HERE
- U+00B0 DEGREE SIGN °

This is clearly gibberish, and bears no relationship to the original string; it is what is generally referred to as "mojibake".

Regards,

-- 
Rowan Tommins
[IMSoP]

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