mb_detect_encoding()

mb_detect_encoding() — Detect character encoding.

Built-in function of PHP 8.5. The manual lists it as available in PHP 4 >= 4.0.6, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8. This page is the reference card: signature, parameters and return value, plus the changelog and the example the manual provides.

What it does

Detects the most likely character encoding for string string from a list of candidates.

Signature

mb_detect_encoding(string $string, array|string|null $encodings = null, bool $strict = false): string|false

Parameters

Parameter	Type	What it takes
$string	string	The string being inspected.
$encodings	array\|string\|null	A list of character encodings to try. The list may be specified as an array of strings, or a single string separated by commas.
$strict	bool	Controls the behaviour when string is not valid in any of the listed encodings. If strict is set to false, the closest matching encoding will be returned; if strict is set to true, false will be returned.

Return value

The detected character encoding, or false if the string is not valid in any of the listed encodings.

Example

A runnable snippet:

$str = "\x95\xB6\x8E\x9A\x83\x52\x81\x5B\x83\x68"; // Detect character encoding with current detect_order var_dump(mb_detect_encoding($str)); // "auto" is expanded according to mbstring.language var_dump(mb_detect_encoding($str, "auto")); // Specify "encodings" parameter by list separated by comma var_dump(mb_detect_encoding($str, "JIS, eucjp-win, sjis-win")); // Use array to specify "encodings" parameter $encodings = [ "ASCII", "JIS", "EUC-JP" ]; var_dump(mb_detect_encoding($str, $encodings));

Output:

string(5) "ASCII" string(5) "ASCII" string(8) "SJIS-win" string(5) "ASCII"

Changelog

Version	Change
8.2.0	mb_detect_encoding() will no longer return the following non text encodings: "Base64", "QPrint", "UUencode", "HTML entities", "7 bit" and "8 bit".