Hi everyone,

Our library is full of functions that use the string functions. We wish
to change these functions to allow them to use multibyte encodings (our
functions, not the ones in the string library). Obviously using the
multibyte string functions would be the way to do this, and is
possible, since we're all using php 5.0 (or above). My question is
this:

I want to change all function headers that use string functions to
accomplish their task to include an optional 'encoding' parameter. It
requires to be optional so that the code w ehave already written
doesn't break. What I want to do is, if this parameter is not
specified, p*** the ISO latin 1 encoding in as the encoding parameter
for the mb string functions. Therefore using this approach existing
code *should* function exactly the same (correct me please if I am
wrong ). What I want to know is if there is a big performance
difference between using the original string functions and using the
newer multibyte string functions with encoding set to ISO Latin 1?

Also, I've seen various references to the 'internal encoding that PHP
uses'. What is this internal encoding?

Thanks

Taras