php: converting from cp1251 to utf8
I have a problem converting a string from cp1251 to utf8...
I need to get some names from database and those names are in cp1251(i'm not the one who made that database, so I can't edit it, but I know for sure that these names are cp1251)...
The name in database is this - "Р?нтернет РІ цифрах" I'm converting it to utf8 using iconv function like this:
iconv("UTF-8", "CP1251//IGNORE", $name)
and what I have in the result is this - "�?нтернет в цифрах"(it's Russian), but the first two symbols are not correct... it should be "Интернет в цифрах"...
So the final thing that I have to do is somehow change these two symbols "�?" to russian letter "И"... and I really don't know how to do that... I've tried to use preg_replace, but it doesn't work...or I'm not using it correctly.
And I'm sorry for Russian letters, it is really hard to explain what I need without showing them.
Answer
The first letter comes out incorrect because one of the bytes needed to store the UTF-8 encoding of И (0x98 to be exact) is not used in CP1251. If the database has replaced the 98 byte by a question mark you have to change it back before using iconv:
$name = str_replace("\xD0\x3F", "\xD0\x98", $name);
echo iconv("UTF-8", "CP1251//IGNORE", $name);