In short, only use mbstring.func_overload if you are 100% certain that nothing on your site relies on manipulating binary data in PHP.
You might often find it difficult to get an existing PHP application to work in a given multibyte environment. This happens because most PHP applications out there are written with the standard string functions such as substr(), which are known to not properly handle multibyte-encoded strings.
mbstring supports a 'function overloading' feature which enables you to add multibyte awareness to such an application without code modification by overloading multibyte counterparts on the standard string functions. For example, mb_substr() is called instead of substr() if function overloading is enabled. This feature makes it easy to port applications that only support single-byte encodings to a multibyte environment in many cases.
To use function overloading, set mbstring.func_overload in php.ini to a positive value that represents a combination of bitmasks specifying the categories of functions to be overloaded. It should be set to 1 to overload the mail() function. 2 for string functions, 4 for regular expression functions. For example, if it is set to 7, mail, strings and regular expression functions will be overloaded. The list of overloaded functions are shown below.
| value of mbstring.func_overload | original function | overloaded function |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | mail() | mb_send_mail() |
| 2 | strlen() | mb_strlen() |
| 2 | strpos() | mb_strpos() |
| 2 | strrpos() | mb_strrpos() |
| 2 | substr() | mb_substr() |
| 2 | strtolower() | mb_strtolower() |
| 2 | strtoupper() | mb_strtoupper() |
| 2 | stripos() | mb_stripos() |
| 2 | strripos() | mb_strripos() |
| 2 | strstr() | mb_strstr() |
| 2 | stristr() | mb_stristr() |
| 2 | strrchr() | mb_strrchr() |
| 2 | substr_count() | mb_substr_count() |
| 4 | ereg() | mb_ereg() |
| 4 | eregi() | mb_eregi() |
| 4 | ereg_replace() | mb_ereg_replace() |
| 4 | eregi_replace() | mb_eregi_replace() |
| 4 | split() | mb_split() |
Note:
It is not recommended to use the function overloading option in the per-directory context, because it's not confirmed yet to be stable enough in a production environment and may lead to undefined behaviour.
In short, only use mbstring.func_overload if you are 100% certain that nothing on your site relies on manipulating binary data in PHP.
In case you need to (de)activate the overloading for a specific directory, try setting an appropriate php_admin_value in your httpd.conf, e.g.
<Directory ...>
...
php_admin_value mbstring.func_overload 7
</Directory>
I'm not 100% sure if one can rely on that, but it seems to work for me.
It seems in php 5.2.7 - 5.2.9 under windows mbstring overloading not working in .htaccess files. Apache v.2.2.
Works only in php.ini, this is not convinient in some situations.