PHP script works outside of EE template but not inside one.

Hey all,

I’m really stumped here. I have a custom PHP script that I need to use that basically takes a string that contains bullets (•) and splits that string into an array for processing a different way.

Really simple script that works fine on a standard (non EE) PHP page:

<?
$manyItems = "• the first thing • the second thing • the third thing •  etc •  etc";
$items = explode("•", $manyItems);
?>

Resulting in this:

$items[0] = "the first thing"
$items[1] = "the second thing"
$items[2] = "the third thing"
$items[3] = "etc"
$items[4] = "etc"

The problem comes when I put this PHP into an EE template. Suddenly the PHP cannot process the bullet (•) character anymore and everything comes out like so:

$items[0] = "• the first thing • the second thing • the third thing •  etc •  etc"

I have dug through documentation and cannot find anything that implies that character encoding is overridden by EE, everything should be using UTF-8, not that I’m even sure that’s the issue…

Has anyone else run into something like this?

[Mod Edit: Moved to the Development and Programming forum]