character encoding - PHP - Convert ΓÇô to dash

Question

I found some special characters in my PHP script. One of them is Γ??. It's actually a special character of a dash -. How should I convert it back to dash so I can process the string?

Answer 1

I found the answer! It's inspired by this answer

$title = "Hunting, Tactical & Outdoor Optics eCommerce Store Γ?? $595,000 Γ?? SOLD";
$title = str_replace(html_entity_decode('–', ENT_COMPAT, 'UTF-8'), '-', $title);
$title = str_replace(html_entity_decode('—', ENT_COMPAT, 'UTF-8'), '-', $title);

Replacing the character right away won't work. html_entity_decode is definitely needed.