title: Convert a string with some ASCII code in PHP
body: <p>I don't know if this question has been already asked! It really seems to be new!
  I found something similar <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4526192/convert-a-string-containing-ascii-to-unicode">here</a>, but it is for <em>Java</em>, not <em>PHP</em>.</p>
  
  <p>Here follows my problem.
  On the client-side, I'm using TinyMCE to get a long text. On the server-side, I extract the first n words from that string for listing purpose.</p>
  
  <p>In particular, the string returned contains HTML code, that I remove by using the PHP <code>strip_tags()</code> function, and <strong>it also contains ASCII characters</strong> (e.g. <code>&amp;nbsp;</code> for spaces). </p>
  
  <p>Is there any PHP function that automatically convert all the ASCII contained in a string or capable to detect all the ASCII code in a string?</p>
  
  <p>In the first case all would be easy; in the latter I should find the ASCII and then replace it with the <code>chr()</code> function.</p>