What is the simplest way to reference a Multibyte string in PHP?
<p>My question:
In PHP it is easy to reference the single byte string, <code>$single = "abc";</code> for example,</p>

<pre><code>echo $single[0]; //"a"
</code></pre>

<p>However for the multibyte string  <code>$multi = "äåö"</code>, I get "nonsense", that is,</p>

<pre><code>echo $multi[0]; //?
</code></pre>

<p>I know one can reference the individual letters of a multi byte string by coding as follows:</p>

<pre><code>mb_internal_encoding("UTF-8");
echo mb_substr($multi,1,1);//which gives the right answer "å"
</code></pre>

<p>But isn't there an easier way to do this?
I am especially looking for a way where I can reference the multi byte string  with  square brackets and just one parameter as for the single byte case.</p>
