title: unicode preg_replace problem in php
body: <p>I've got the string</p>
  
  <pre><code>$result = "bei einer Temperatur, die etwa 20 bis 60°C unterhalb des Schmelzpunktes der kristallinen Modifikation"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>which comes straight from a MySQL table. The table, and the php headers are both set to UTF-8</p>
  
  <p>I want to strip the 'degree' symbol: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degree_symbol" rel="noreferrer">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degree_symbol</a> and replace it with the word 'degrees' to get:</p>
  
  <p>"bei einer Temperatur, die etwa 20 bis 60degreesC unterhalb des Schmelzpunktes der kristallinen Modifikation"</p>
  
  <p>but I can't get it to work with preg_replace.</p>
  
  <p>If I do: </p>
  
  <pre><code>$result = preg_replace('/\xB0/u'," degrees ", $result ); - I get an empty string
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And if I do::</p>
  
  <pre><code>$result = preg_replace('/\u00B0/u'," degrees ", $result ); - I get the error:
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Warning: preg_replace() [function.preg-replace]: Compilation failed: PCRE does not support \L, \l, \N, \U, or \u at offset 1 in /var/www/html/includes/classes/redeyeTable.inc.php on line 75</p>
  
  <p>I'm not great with encodings... what am I doing wrong here?</p>