replaceing strange characters -Ma¤rkisch-

Discussion in 'PHP' started by mahmood, Mar 1, 2006.

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  1. #1
    I have an excel database and trying to read the content into mysql, as you probably know MS office does some funny things to non-english characters. for example instead of "Märkisch" it has "Ma¤rkisch".

    Now the problem is that I can not replace some of these characters such as "a¤" to their original form. I use str_replace but it doesnot recognise them.

    Any idea?
     
    mahmood, Mar 1, 2006 IP
  2. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

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    #2
    What if you use a unicode enabled font in Word? Then it should work I would think.
     
    digitalpoint, Mar 1, 2006 IP
  3. mad4

    mad4 Peon

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    #3
    Or you could save the excel file as a csv and open it in a text editor. Then run a macro in the text editor to search for each instance of the character and replace it with the correct one.
     
    mad4, Mar 2, 2006 IP
  4. mahmood

    mahmood Guest

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    #4
    I saved the file a CSV and opened it in notepad and characters were OK. So I change font arial to "Arial Unicode MS" which according to excel help should work fine with non-english characters but to no good.

    Any idea?
     
    mahmood, Mar 2, 2006 IP
  5. jordie

    jordie Peon

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    #5
    I'm thinking its because they are double byte characters.... So in your case a¤ in MS word combine together to form ä.

    See if your PHP has mbstring functions: http://www.php.net/mbstring
     
    jordie, Mar 2, 2006 IP