What are some common pitfalls to avoid when working with string manipulation in PHP, specifically when dealing with character count and truncation?

One common pitfall when working with string manipulation in PHP is not taking into account multibyte characters, which can lead to incorrect character count and truncation. To avoid this issue, it's recommended to use multibyte-safe functions like `mb_strlen()` and `mb_substr()` when dealing with character count and truncation. 

// Incorrect way to get character count and truncate a string
$string = "こんにちは"; // Japanese greeting with 5 characters
$length = strlen($string); // Incorrect character count
$truncated = substr($string, 0, 3); // Incorrect truncation

// Correct way to get character count and truncate a string
$string = "こんにちは";
$length = mb_strlen($string, 'UTF-8'); // Correct character count
$truncated = mb_substr($string, 0, 3, 'UTF-8'); // Correct truncation

Keywords

strlen substr mb_strlen mb_substr encoding

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