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 string via querystring:

When i open:
http://localhost/index.php?q=this%20wórds

header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');
print_r(str_word_count($_GET['q'],1,'ó'));

Instead of returning:

[0] this
[1] wórds

…it returns:

[0] this
[1] w
[2] rds

How could this function support those special characters that are being sent through querystring?

Update – it worked out just fine by using mario‘s solution:

function sanitize_words($string) {
    preg_match_all("/\p{L}[\p{L}\p{Mn}\p{Pd}'\x{2019}]*/u",$string,$matches,PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);
    return $matches[0];
}

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.