[jcampbell1]

You really don't want string functions to be unicode. Strings in php are actually byte arrays. If you take that away, you will break far more than you fix. You are basically killing the baby, so substr() works a tiny bit better.

I don't want to have to flag every string as unicode. It is pointless as they already are all unicode, and it is not that bad to know the very small number times where php's binary functions don't work (e.g. substr, regex in certain cases).

[kalleboo]

> Strings in php are actually byte arrays. If you take that away, you will break far more than you fix. You are basically killing the baby, so substr() works a tiny bit better

That's a good point I hadn't thought about - processing binary files. I guess what I really want is a "texual string" class that you can trust. The problem right now are the inconsistent "mb_" functions that you sometimes have to use, don't always exist, and aren't always 1:1 mappings.