I've used PHP in the past (PHP 4 and 5), as well as some simple templated projects in PHP 7. I try to keep up on news with what is happening in the PHP world, and it's difficult because of the hate for the language. Is the solution to Unicode strings still to just use the "mb_*" functions?
I got my real professional start using PHP, and have built even financial systems in the language (since ported to .NET 6 for my ease of maintenance, and better number handling). I'm still very interested in the language itself, in case I ever have the need to freelance or provide a solution to a client that can't afford what I can build in .NET (although to be honest, at this point I'm roughly able to code at the same speed in .NET as in PHP, but with the added type-safety, although I know PHP has really stepped up in providing this).
I believe so - most (all?) string functions have an mb_ equivalent, for working on multibyte strings.
Regular PHP strings are actually pretty great, since you can treat them like byte arrays. Fun fact: PHPs streaming API has an “in-memory” option and it’s… just a string under the hood.
Just don’t forget to use multibyte functions when you’re handling things like user input.
I got my real professional start using PHP, and have built even financial systems in the language (since ported to .NET 6 for my ease of maintenance, and better number handling). I'm still very interested in the language itself, in case I ever have the need to freelance or provide a solution to a client that can't afford what I can build in .NET (although to be honest, at this point I'm roughly able to code at the same speed in .NET as in PHP, but with the added type-safety, although I know PHP has really stepped up in providing this).