[jspaetzel]

I agree, it'd be nice if the built in was more standardized and had more features.

However you do have options to choose from with php these days. Really well maintained libraries exist for basically everything you could want, often they are fast, well tested and modular. And it's nice because you can even choose the style you prefer with this.

Grab the symphony string lib for instance: https://symfony.com/doc/current/components/string.html