get the first letter in a string (the string contains arabic letters)
<p>I am trying to retrieve the first letter of a string. My current simple function is :</p>

<pre><code>function idar($word)
{
return substr($word, 0, 1);
}
</code></pre>

<p>However, I realized that this function does not work on Arabic letters! It returns nothing to me. </p>

<p>for example try the word "محمد" it suppose to return "م" as the first letter. </p>

<p>Is there another way of returning the first letter of a string of any language?</p>
