For getting a substring of UTF-8 characters, I highly recommend mb_substr
<?php
$utf8string = "cakeæøå";
echo substr($utf8string,0,5);
// output cake#
echo mb_substr($utf8string,0,5,'UTF-8');
//output cakeæ
?>
For getting a substring of UTF-8 characters, I highly recommend mb_substr
<?php
$utf8string = "cakeæøå";
echo substr($utf8string,0,5);
// output cake#
echo mb_substr($utf8string,0,5,'UTF-8');
//output cakeæ
?>