Supporting special characters with str_word_count()

Question

The str_word_count() function returns an array that holds all words in a string. It works great, except when using special characters. In this case, the php script receives the

Answer 1

Not sure if that third parameter is sufficient to make str_word_count work for non-ASCII symbols. It probably only works with Latin-1 if anything.

As alternative you could count the words with a regex however:

$count = preg_match_all('/\pL+/u', $_GET['q'], $matches);

This works for UTF-8 at least. To fully replicate str_word_count you might need [\pL']+ eventually.