Yes, it can be useful in debugging when the flag matters. In this case, it only served to be a distraction. Thinking in terms of the UTF8 flag is the wrong way to go. Thinking in terms of encoded or not would have avoided all his problems.

Therefore, he needs to decode what param returns and encode what he prints.

Using is_utf8 gives an idea whether the characters are decoded or not, but it's not reliable. In fact, it's specifically unreliable with decoded_entities since the string decoded_entities returns can have either state for the UTF8 flag. Documentation and Hungarian Notation are better tools here than is_utf8.

Update: Fixed ambiguous pronouns. Fixed bad grammar. Fixed formatting.

In reply to Re^3: UTF-8: Trying to make sense of form input by ikegami
in thread UTF-8: Trying to make sense of form input by cosmicperl

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