title: Is Phalcon UTF8 compliant?
body: <p>I was wondering what is the internals of Phalcon using with regards to UTF8?</p>
  
  <p>For instance if I use something like this</p>
  
  <pre><code>echo strlen('hello'); // output 5
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However </p>
  
  <pre><code>echo strlen('汉字/漢字'); // will output something like 10
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>strlen is not UTF8 compatible so one has to use the mb_strlen to be safe.</p>
  
  <p>Does Phalcon use (internally) mb_* related functions? If not how can we ensure that everything internally is handled in a UTF8 manner to ensure compatibility with all languages?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>