PHP str_ireplace same word with accent or not

Hope this is a better...

I set "mysqli_set_charset($conn,"utf8");" before doing a standard query SELECT-FROM-WHERE. This query performs an accent insentive compare.

str_ireplace(search, replace, text) search does an accent sensitive compare. I would need search to do an accents insentive compare.

I want to highlight the word "Français". I replace "Français" by

<mark>Français</mark>

but at the same time I want to replace "Francais" by

<mark>Francais</mark>

---

older post:

I use a simple way to highlight some text:

$markReplace = "<mark>" . $wordToSearch . "</mark>";
$fullText = str_ireplace($wordToSearch, $markReplace, $fullText);
echo $fullText;

It works fine, the problem is that sometimes the same $wordToSearch can have a accent or not. For example "huître-huitre", "Francais-Français", "echo-écho" because of typo errors. And contrary to MySql, str_ireplace doesn't detect a letter with an accent as the same letter without the accent.

$unwanted_array = array('Š'=>'S', 'š'=>'s', 'Ž'=>'Z', 'ž'=>'z', 'À'=>'A', 'Á'=>'A', 'Â'=>'A', 'Ã'=>'A', 'Ä'=>'A', 'Å'=>'A', 'Æ'=>'A', 'Ç'=>'C', 'È'=>'E', 'É'=>'E',
                        'Ê'=>'E', 'Ë'=>'E', 'Ì'=>'I', 'Í'=>'I', 'Î'=>'I', 'Ï'=>'I', 'Ñ'=>'N', 'Ò'=>'O', 'Ó'=>'O', 'Ô'=>'O', 'Õ'=>'O', 'Ö'=>'O', 'Ø'=>'O', 'Ù'=>'U',
                        'Ú'=>'U', 'Û'=>'U', 'Ü'=>'U', 'Ý'=>'Y', 'Þ'=>'B', 'ß'=>'Ss', 'à'=>'a', 'á'=>'a', 'â'=>'a', 'ã'=>'a', 'ä'=>'a', 'å'=>'a', 'æ'=>'a', 'ç'=>'c',
                        'è'=>'e', 'é'=>'e', 'ê'=>'e', 'ë'=>'e', 'ì'=>'i', 'í'=>'i', 'î'=>'i', 'ï'=>'i', 'ð'=>'o', 'ñ'=>'n', 'ò'=>'o', 'ó'=>'o', 'ô'=>'o', 'õ'=>'o',
                        'ö'=>'o', 'ø'=>'o', 'ù'=>'u', 'ú'=>'u', 'û'=>'u', 'ý'=>'y', 'þ'=>'b', 'ÿ'=>'y' );
$str = strtr( $str, $unwanted_array );

A solution that would use something like this doesn't work because it will change all the accents in $fullText. I need to keep the original words when I echo $fullText.

Can't figure out the solution.

Thanks... Andy