title: PHP Multibyte String Functions
body: <p>Today I ran into a problem with the php function <code>strpos()</code> because it returned FALSE even if the correct result was obviously 0. This was because one parameter was encoded in UTF-8, but the other (origin is a HTTP GET parameter) obviously not.</p>
  
  <p>Now I have noticed that using the <code>mb_strpos</code> function solved my problem.</p>
  
  <p>My question is now: Is it wisely to use the PHP multibyte string functions generally to avoid theses problems in future? Should I avoid the traditional <code>strpos</code>, <code>strlen</code>, <code>ereg</code>, etc., etc. functions at all?</p>
  
  <p>Notice: I don't want to set <code>mbstring.func_overload</code> global in php.ini, because this leads to other problems when using the PEAR library. I am using PHP4.</p>