... PHP 4 >= 4.0.6) mb_substr -- Get part of string . string mb_substr ( string str, int start [, int length [, string encoding]]) . mb_substr() returns the portion of str specified by the start and length parameters. mb_substr() performs multi-byte safe substr() operation based on number of characters. Position is counted from the beginning of str . ... If encoding is omitted, internal encoding is assumed. encoding is character encoding. ... See also mb_strcut() , mb_internal_encoding() . ...