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How to check if the word is Japanese or English using PHP


I want to have different process for English word and Japanese word in this function

function process_word($word) {
   if($word is english) {
     /////////
   }else if($word is japanese) {
      ////////
   }
}

thank you


Solution

  • A quick solution that doesn't need the mb_string extension:

    if (strlen($str) != strlen(utf8_decode($str))) {
        // $str uses multi-byte chars (isn't English)
    }
    
    else {
        // $str is ASCII (probably English)
    }
    

    Or a modification of the solution provided by @Alexander Konstantinov:

    function isKanji($str) {
        return preg_match('/[\x{4E00}-\x{9FBF}]/u', $str) > 0;
    }
    
    function isHiragana($str) {
        return preg_match('/[\x{3040}-\x{309F}]/u', $str) > 0;
    }
    
    function isKatakana($str) {
        return preg_match('/[\x{30A0}-\x{30FF}]/u', $str) > 0;
    }
    
    function isJapanese($str) {
        return isKanji($str) || isHiragana($str) || isKatakana($str);
    }