Are the PHP preg_functions multibyte safe?
multibyte, php, preg-match, preg-replace
Solution
PCRE can support UTF-8 and other Unicode encodings, but it has to be specified at compile time. From the man page for PCRE 8.0:
The current implementation of PCRE corresponds approximately with Perl 5.10, including support for UTF-8 encoded strings and Unicode general category properties. However, UTF-8 and Unicode support has to be explicitly enabled; it is not the default. The Unicode tables correspond to Unicode release 5.1.
PHP currently uses PCRE 7.9; your system might have an older version.
Taking a look at the PCRE lib that comes with PHP 5.2, it appears that it's configured to support Unicode properties and UTF-8. Same for the 5.3 branch.
Problem
There are no multibyte 'preg' functions available in PHP, so does that mean the default preg_functions are all mb safe? Couldn't find any mention in the php documentation.