Multibyte characters validation problem

[eluser]esra[/eluser]
[quote author="xwero" date="1205165929"]There are Multibyte string functions but they are slower than the regular functions and php needs an install option to add the functions because they are not in the default installation.

If you are on a server where the option is added, check php.ini, you can extend the rules with the multibyte functions.[/quote]

There are also Harry Fueck's php-utf extended string functions on SourceForge.org which could be used as helpers. I believe that the Akelos and Kohana frameworks check to see if the PHP mbstring extension is loaded and use the multibyte string functions if mbstring is loaded. If not loaded, they use the php-utf string functions.

It's probably possible to reimplement Harry Fuecks extended string functions as a CI class library, but that library probably needs to be loaded as a core library to make it available to the Validation library and other libraries. I was hoping to see EllisLabs tackle this on their own at some point in time. Maybe something like this will happen now that EE 2.0 is based on CodeIgniter since better support for UTF-8 should give EE more market share on the global market.