PHP UTF-8 encoding problem of U+009A

Question

I have problems displaying the Unicode character of U+009A.

It should look like "š", but instead looks like a rectangular block with the numbers 009A inside.

Converting it to the entity "š" displays the character correctly, but I don't want to store entities in the database.

The encoding of the webpage is in UTF-8.

The character is URL-encoded as "%C2%9A".

Reproduce: # php -E 'echo urldecode("%C2%9A");' > /tmp/test ; less /tmp/test

This gives me <U+009A> in less or <9A> in vim.

Answer 1

If you’re using UTF-8 as your input encoding, then you can simply use the plain š. Or you could use the hexadecimal representation "\xC2\x9A" (in double quotes) that’s independent from the input encoding. Or utf8_encode("\x9A") since the first 256 characters of Unicode and ISO 8859-1 are identical.

Answer 2

If I do a hexdump of the output of echo urldecode("%C2%9A"); I get c2 9a, which is the correct UTF-8 encoding for character 0x9a.

You get that same encoding from the output of utf8_encode("\x9A")

When I try to view Unicode char 0x9a, I get a square box too - suspect it's not the char you think it should be (Aha: as Azquelt has posted, unicode character "š" is U+0161, not U+009A)

Answer 3

The Unicode character "š" is U+0161, not U+009A

I suspect that it's 0x9A in another character set.

The box with 009A is usually shown when you don't have a font installed with that character.