mb_substr

(PHP 4 >= 4.0.6, PHP 5)

mb_substr -- Get part of string

Description

string mb_substr ( string str, int start [, int length [, string encoding]] )

mb_substr() returns the portion of str specified by the start and length parameters.

mb_substr() performs multi-byte safe substr() operation based on number of characters. Position is counted from the beginning of str. First character's position is 0. Second character position is 1, and so on.

If encoding is omitted, internal encoding is assumed.

encoding is character encoding. If it is omitted, internal character encoding is used.

See also mb_strcut(), mb_internal_encoding().


add a note add a note User Contributed Notes
xiaogil at yahoo dot fr
02-Aug-2005 11:33
Thanks Darien from /freenode #php for the following example (a little bit changed).

It just prints the 6th character of $string.
You can replace the digits by the same in japanese, chinese or whatever language to make a test, it works perfect.

<?php
mb_internal_encoding
("UTF-8");
$string = "0123456789";
$mystring = mb_substr($string,5,1);
echo
$mystring;
?>

(I couldn't replace 0123456789 by chinese numbers for example here, because it's automatically converted into latin digits on this website, look :
&#38646;&#19968;&#20108;&#19977;&#22235;
&#20116;&#20845;&#19971;&#20843;&#20061;)

gilv
drraf at tlen dot pl
23-Feb-2005 10:44
Note: If borders are out of string - mb_string() returns empty _string_, when function substr() returns _boolean_ false in this case.
Keep this in mind when using "===" comparisions.

Example code:
<?php

var_dump
( substr( 'abc', 5, 2 ) ); // returns "false"
var_dump( mb_substr( 'abc', 5, 2 ) ); // returns ""

?>

It's especially confusing when using mbstring with function overloading turned on.