Online PHP editor | refs for a1l3s

<?php $bom = "\xef\xbb\xbf"; $json_string = $bom.'{"greeting":"Tschüss welt","emoji":"😃"}'; var_dump( $json_string, preg_replace('/[\x00-\x1F\x80-\xFF]/', '', $json_string), json_decode(preg_replace('/[\x00-\x1F\x80-\xFF]/', '', $json_string), true) ); // removing the BOM sequence only and from the very beginning only $json_string = preg_replace("/^\xEF\xBB\xBF/", '', $json_string); var_dump( $json_string, json_decode($json_string, true) );