Unicode character in PHP string

Question

This question looks embarrassingly simple, but I haven\'t been able to find an answer.

What is the PHP equivalent to the following C# line of code?

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Answer 1

PHP does not know these Unicode escape sequences. But as unknown escape sequences remain unaffected, you can write your own function that converts such Unicode escape sequences:

function unicodeString($str, $encoding=null) {
    if (is_null($encoding)) $encoding = ini_get('mbstring.internal_encoding');
    return preg_replace_callback('/\\\\u([0-9a-fA-F]{4})/u', create_function('$match', 'return mb_convert_encoding(pack("H*", $match[1]), '.var_export($encoding, true).', "UTF-16BE");'), $str);
}

Or with an anonymous function expression instead of create_function:

function unicodeString($str, $encoding=null) {
    if (is_null($encoding)) $encoding = ini_get('mbstring.internal_encoding');
    return preg_replace_callback('/\\\\u([0-9a-fA-F]{4})/u', function($match) use ($encoding) {
        return mb_convert_encoding(pack('H*', $match[1]), $encoding, 'UTF-16BE');
    }, $str);
}

Its usage:

$str = unicodeString("\u1000");