PHP readdir with european characters

Question

I get images files which have Czech characters in the filename (eg, ěščřžýáíé) and I want to rename them without the accents so that they are more compatible for the web. I thought I could use a simple str_replace function but it doesn't seem to work the same with the file array as it does with a string literal.

I read the files with readdir, after checking for extension.

function readFiles($dir, $ext = false) {
    if (is_dir($dir)) {
        if ($dh = opendir($dir)) {
            while (($file = readdir($dh)) !== false) {
                if($ext){  
                    if(end(explode('.', $file)) == $ext) {
                        $f[] = $file;
                    }
                } else {
                    $f[] = $file;
                }
            }

            closedir($dh);
            return $f;
        } else {
            return false;
        }
    } else {
        return false;
    }
}

$files = readFiles(".", "jpg");

$search = array('š','á','ž','í','ě','é','ř','ň','ý','č',' ');
$replace = array('s','a','z','i','e','e','r','n','y','c','-');

$string = "čšěáýísdjksnalci sášěééalskcnkkjy+ěéší";
$safe_string = str_replace($search, $replace, $string);

echo '<pre>';

foreach($files as $fl) {
    $safe_files[] = str_replace($search, $replace, $fl);
}

var_dump($files);
var_dump($safe_files);

var_dump($string);
var_dump($safe_string);

echo '</pre>';

Output

array(6) {
  [0]=>
  string(21) "Hl�vka s listem01.jpg"
  [1]=>
  string(23) "Hl�vky v atelieru02.jpg"
  [2]=>
  string(17) "Jarn� v�hon03.jpg"
  [3]=>
  string(17) "Mlad� chmel04.jpg"
  [4]=>
  string(23) "Stavba chmelnice 05.jpg"
  [5]=>
  string(21) "Zimni chmelnice06.jpg"
}
array(6) {
  [0]=>
  string(21) "Hl�vka-s-listem01.jpg"
  [1]=>
  string(23) "Hl�vky-v-atelieru02.jpg"
  [2]=>
  string(17) "Jarn�-v�hon03.jpg"
  [3]=>
  string(17) "Mlad�-chmel04.jpg"
  [4]=>
  string(23) "Stavba-chmelnice-05.jpg"
  [5]=>
  string(21) "Zimni-chmelnice06.jpg"
}
string(53) "čšěáýísdjksnalci sášěééalskcnkkjy+ěéší"
string(38) "cseayisdjksnalci-saseeealskcnkkjy+eesi"

Right now I'm running on WAMP but answers that work across platforms are even better :)

Answer 1

According to the 0xFFFD marks (which appears in Firefox as diamonds with a question mark inside) you already aren't reading them using the correct encoding (which would be Unicode / UTF-8). As far I found this bug, it seems to be related.

Here's another SO topic about that: php readdir problem with japanese language file name

To the point, wait until they get PHP6 stable and then use it.

Unrelated to the problem: the Normalizer is a better tool to get rid of diacritical marks.