[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #54415: remove_accent does not remove accents

[WordPress Trac]

#54415: remove_accent does not remove accents
-----------------------------------------+------------------------------
 Reporter:  malthert                     |       Owner:  (none)
     Type:  defect (bug)                 |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal                       |   Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  Formatting                   |     Version:
 Severity:  normal                       |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  reporter-feedback has-patch  |     Focuses:
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Comment (by malthert):

 Replying to [comment:9 SergeyBiryukov]:
 > Sounds good to me, let's just check for any de_* locale.

 Ok, will check for "de" locale (since "de" without trailing underscore is
 technically valid too, and there are no 3 letter locales starting with
 "de" so it's safe in this regard too https://www.localeplanet.com/icu/)

 > > 2) the letter "ß" is only used in German languages anyway and there is
 no transliteration of ß => s to be found anywhere.
 > > This will be removed from the conditional and update the "general"
 transliteration of ß to ss
 >
 > I think I'd prefer for this to be added to the conditial too, for
 clarity and consistency, to keep the replacements relevant to German
 locales in a single place.

 But you already have "ß" in the general part - where it's transliterated
 to "s". However this is wrong - "ß" is always transliterated to "ss". I
 wasn't able to find ANY reliable sources, that transliterated "ß" => "s",
 like WP core does.

 > >
 > > 3) add a 2nd arg to the function remove_accents: $locale = false
 (@param string $locale optionally set a locale if you do not want to use
 the locale of the current language)
 >
 > I think this can already be achieved by using `switch_to_locale()` and
 `restore_previous_locale()`:
 > {{{
 > $switched_locale = switch_to_locale( '...' );
 >
 > $string = remove_accents( $string );
 >
 > if ( $switched_locale ) {
 >       restore_previous_locale();
 > }
 > }}}
 >
 > The same approach is used when sending emails in user's language instead
 of site language, without the need for passing any additional parameters
 to the functions.

 Good point, I should have mentioned before (since I was aware of this):
 Calling switch_to_locale will load all strings of that locale - this has a
 major impact on performance and memory-consumption (up to the point of OOM
 errors, which can be quickly reached if we have a website that serves
 multiple European markets/languages).

 For the given use case of "remove_accents" this is breaking a fly on the
 wheel (which WP is struggling with in loads of other areas already, don't
 want to make it even worse)

 I think adding an optional $locale parameter would be a non-invasive
 change, that would not impact performance and not break anything either.
 Additionally it would make any user directly aware, that remove_accents is
 a locale aware function, where locale decides what "result" you get.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/54415#comment:10>
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