Foreign Chars in url_title() in Codeigniter - php

Question

I am using foreign accented chars with url_title() in Codeigniter
function url_title ($str,$separator='-',$lowercase=FALSE) {
if ($separator=='dash') $separator = '-';
else if ($separator=='underscore') $separator = '_';
$q_separator = preg_quote($separator);
$trans = array(
'\.'=>$separator,
'\_'=>$separator,
'&.+?;'=>'',
'[^a-z0-9 _-]'=>'',
'\s+'=>$separator,
'('.$q_separator.')+'=>$separator
);
$str = strip_tags($str);
foreach ($trans as $key => $val) $str = preg_replace("#".$key."#i", $val, $str);
if ($lowercase === TRUE) $str = strtolower($str);
return trim($str, $separator);
}
And I am calling the function as url_title(convert_accented_characters($str),TRUE);.
$str is being populated as:
$posted_file_full_name = $_FILES['userfile']['name'];
$uploaded_file->filename = pathinfo($posted_file_full_name, PATHINFO_FILENAME);
$uploaded_file->extension = pathinfo($posted_file_full_name, PATHINFO_EXTENSION);
It works nicely UNLESS string start with a foreign character like Ç,Ş,Ğ. If those character are in the middle of the string, it converts gracefully. But if begins with those, it just removes the characters instead of replacing with mached ones.
Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

After a tedious searching, it comes out that url_title() function is not the main reason. Actually, it's not the CI that removes initial foreign characters:
pathinfo($posted_file_full_name, PATHINFO_FILENAME);
This part removes initial characters. I updated my code as:
$uploaded_file->filename = str_replace('.'.$uploaded_file->extension,'',$posted_file_full_name);
and now it works as expected. Hope this helps others who stucked in a such phase.