I haven't worked too much in my PHP experience with international (non-English) characters [I used to handle foreign scraping in C++ UNICODEian] and pretty much all I saved in databases was HTML Encoded. Finally decided UTF8 MySQL encoding is not a feature to ignore anymore and is a must have when using the 'funky characters'.

These are my functions I use to bulk convert databases / tables in mysql to UTF8 character encoding. Have fun with them.

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*** Functions use el_sql_stubFunction.

Examples:

These are the tricky examples. Figure the rest out from the code.

1. el_sql_utf8Schema('*'); // Converts all databases
2. el_sql_utf8Schema('*.*'); // Converts all databases and child tables
3. el_sql_utf8Table('*'); // Converts all tables in current schema

Use these functions wisely and look at the code. It's pretty much commented. It's a glance at how I code ... parameters ... possibilities.

PS: Thanks for the kind words.