note 14482 deleted from function.strtr by felipe

Note Submitter: persiflage2000 at yahoo dot com 

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To replace unicode characters with their ascii equivalents, use

$my_string = strtr($my_string, $unicode_array);

using this array:

$unicode_array = array(
		"–" => "-",
		"—" => "-",
		"–" => "-",
		"‘" => "'",
		"’" => "'",
		"’" => "'",
		"‘" => "'",
		"…" => "...",
		"…" => "...",
		"“" => "\"",
		"“" => "\"",
		"”" => "\"",
		"”" => "\"",
	);

It is important to note you need both the unicode contol character (”) AND its text equivalent (”).  For instance, text copied and pasted into your html form from M$ Word will have the control character, whereas the same text viewed in a browser and copied into your html form using drag-and-drop will have the text equivalent.

A pox on Redmond for the way M$ Word is set to convert all these characters to unicode equivalents by default.

Note: you can expand the array to get rid of accented characters too, but remember the same thing applies.  For example, both "Š" => "S" and "Š" => "S" should be added to the array.