# utf8_encode

(PHP 4, PHP 5)

utf8_encode — Encodes an ISO-8859-1 string to UTF-8

### Description

string utf8_encode ( string `$data` )

This function encodes the string `data` to UTF-8, and returns the encoded version. UTF-8 is a standard mechanism used by Unicode for encoding wide character values into a byte stream. UTF-8 is transparent to plain ASCII characters, is self-synchronized (meaning it is possible for a program to figure out where in the bytestream characters start) and can be used with normal string comparison functions for sorting and such. PHP encodes UTF-8 characters in up to four bytes, like this:

UTF-8 encoding
bytes | bits | representation
--- | --- | ---
1 | 7 | 0bbbbbbb
2 | 11 | 110bbbbb 10bbbbbb
3 | 16 | 1110bbbb 10bbbbbb 10bbbbbb
4 | 21 | 11110bbb 10bbbbbb 10bbbbbb 10bbbbbb

Each b represents a bit that can be used to store character data.

### Parameters

`data`

  An ISO-8859-1 string.

### Return Values

Returns the UTF-8 translation of `data` .