Difference between mb_substr and substr

Question

Will it make any difference or impact on my result, if I use substr() instead of mb_substr() function?

As my server does not have support for mb_ functions, I have to replace it with substr()

Answer 1

It will impact your script if you work with multi-byte text that you substring from. If this is the case, I higly recommend enabling mb_* functions in your php.ini or do this ini_set("mbstring.func_overload", 2);

Answer 2

If you have utf-8 encoding use mb_substr

Example :

echo substr("hi mémé", 0 , 5); // will print hi m�
echo mb_substr("hi mémé", 0 , 5); // will print hi mé

Answer 3

string substr ( string $string , int $start [, int $length ] )

Returns the portion of string specified by the start and length parameters.

string mb_substr ( string $str , int $start [, int $length [, string $encoding ]] )

Performs a multi-byte safe substr() operation based on number of characters. Position is counted from the beginning of str. First character's position is 0. Second character position is 1, and so on.