Charset problems with PHP - php

Question

I have a problem with a PHP code that transforms accent characters in non accent characters. I have this code working a year ago but I'm trying to get this to work but without success. The translation is not done correctly.
Here is the code:
<?php
echo accentdestroyer('azeméis');
/**
*
* This function transform accent characters to non accent characters
* #param text $string
*/
function accentdestroyer($string) {
$string=strtr($string,
"()!$?: ,&+-/.ŠŒŽšœžŸ¥µÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖØÙÚÛÜÝßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõöøùúûüýÿ"
,
"-------------SOZsozYYuAAAAAAACEEEEIIIIDNOOOOOOUUUUYsaaaaaaaceeeeiiiionoooooouuuuyy");
return $string;
}
?>
I have tested to save the document in UTF-8 but gives me something like this: "azemy�is"
Some clues on what can I do to get this working correctly?
Best Regards,

Answer 1

A better solution may be to transliterate those characters automatically using iconv().
As for the reason your function doesn't work, it may have something to do with the fact that echo strlen('Š'); outputs 2. The documentation explicitly refers to single byte characters.
Also,
$a = 'Š';
var_dump(strtr('Š', 'Š', '!')); // string(2) "!�"
So the first byte has been matched but the second one (leftover) isn't a byte pointing to a valid Unicode character.
Update
Here is a workign example using iconv().
$str = 'ŒŽšœžŸ¥µÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖØÙÚ';
$str = iconv("utf-8", "us-ascii//TRANSLIT", $str);
var_dump($str); // string(37) "OEZsoezY?uAAAAAAAECEEEEIIII?NOOOOO?UU"
Some characters didn't quite translate, such as ¥ and Ø, but most did. You can append //IGNORE to the output character set to silently discard the ones which don't transliterate.
You could also drop all non word characters too using a Unicode regex with \pL.