How to iterate UTF-8 string in PHP?
php, utf-8
Solution
Use preg_split. With "u" modifier it supports UTF-8 unicode.
$chrArray = preg_split('//u', $str, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
Problem
How to iterate a UTF-8 string character by character using indexing? When you access a UTF-8 string with the bracket operator `$str[0]` the utf-encoded character consists of 2 or more elements. For example: ``` $str = "Kąt"; $str[0] = "K"; $str[1] = "�"; $str[2] = "�"; $str[3] = "t"; ``` but I would like to have: ``` $str[0] = "K"; $str[1] = "ą"; $str[2] = "t"; ``` It is possible with `mb_substr` but this is extremely slow, ie. ``` mb_substr($str, 0, 1) = "K" mb_substr($str, 1, 1) = "ą" mb_substr($str, 2, 1) = "t" ``` Is there another way to interate the string character by character without using `mb_substr`?