Convert string to requested character encoding

iconv_substr
ob_iconv_handler
iconv Functions
PHP Manual

# iconv

(PHP 4 >= 4.0.5, PHP 5, PHP 7)

iconv — Convert string to requested character encoding

### Description

string iconv ( string `$in_charset` , string `$out_charset` , string `$str` )

Performs a character set conversion on the string `str` from `in_charset` to `out_charset`.

### Parameters

`in_charset`

  The input charset.

`out_charset`

  The output charset.

  If you append the string //TRANSLIT to `out_charset` transliteration is activated. This means that when a character can't be represented in the target charset, it can be approximated through one or several similarly looking characters. If you append the string //IGNORE, characters that cannot be represented in the target charset are silently discarded. Otherwise, `E_NOTICE` is generated and the function will return `FALSE`.

`str`

  The string to be converted.

### Return Values

Returns the converted string or `FALSE` on failure.

### Changelog

Version | Description
--- | ---
5.4.0 | Since this version, the function returns `FALSE` on illegal characters, unless //IGNORE is specified in output charset. Before, it returned partial output string.

### Examples

Example #1 iconv() example

`<?php
$text = "This is the Euro symbol '€'.";
echo 'Original : ', $text, PHP_EOL;
echo 'TRANSLIT : ', iconv("UTF-8", "ISO-8859-1//TRANSLIT", $text), PHP_EOL;
echo 'IGNORE : ', iconv("UTF-8", "ISO-8859-1//IGNORE", $text), PHP_EOL;
echo 'Plain : ', iconv("UTF-8", "ISO-8859-1", $text), PHP_EOL;
?>`

The above example will output something similar to:

    Original : This is the Euro symbol '€'.
    TRANSLIT : This is the Euro symbol 'EUR'.
    IGNORE   : This is the Euro symbol ''.
    Plain    :
    Notice: iconv(): Detected an illegal character in input string in .\iconv-example.php on line 7

iconv_substr
ob_iconv_handler
iconv Functions
PHP Manual