How to detect in PHP that pensé is the same as pense

Question

How can I do a test in PHP to compare two words (one with accent) and detect that is the same word ?

e.g pensé vs pense

Basically I told it to load certain words from MySQL table, and with MySQL collation settings it loads both versions from db, which is fine, but I want PHP to detect them as the same word too (Like MySQL does in this particular situation).

I assume in PHP it can be done with the collator class but I don't understand how it works.

Answer 1

As you mentioned, you can use the PHP Collator class.

Collator is part of intl extension - make sure your PHP has intl extension enabled

<?php
// Check if Intl extension is loaded
if (!extension_loaded('intl')) {
    exit('Intl extension is not enabled. Please enable it to use Collator.');
}

// Create a Collator object with a specific locale
$collator = new Collator('en_US');

// Set the strength to PRIMARY to ignore accents and case differences
$collator->setStrength(Collator::PRIMARY);

// Strings to compare
$string1 = 'pensé';
$string2 = 'pense';

// Compare the strings
if ($collator->compare($string1, $string2) == 0) {
    echo "The strings are considered equal.";
} else {
    echo "The strings are not equal.";
}
?>

If you are using multiple different languages:

1. Set a general use locale: $collator = new Collator('root');

2. Dynamically switch locale if the language context is known, for example a user has a specific language set.

This would look something like this:

<?php
function getLocaleFromLanguage($languageCode) {
    $locales = [
        'en' => 'en_US',
        'fr' => 'fr_FR',
        'es' => 'es_ES',
        'de' => 'de_DE',
    ];

    return $locales[$languageCode] ?? 'en_US';
}

function compareStrings($string1, $string2, $languageCode) {
    if (!extension_loaded('intl')) {
        exit('Intl extension is not enabled. Please enable it to use Collator.');
    }

    $locale = getLocaleFromLanguage($languageCode);
    $collator = new Collator($locale);
    $collator->setStrength(Collator::PRIMARY);

    return $collator->compare($string1, $string2) == 0;
}

// Example usage
$string1 = 'pensé'; // Assume this is Spanish
$string2 = 'pense';

if (compareStrings($string1, $string2, 'es')) {
    echo "The strings are considered equal.";
} else {
    echo "The strings are not equal.";
}
?>