How to find number of characters in a string in PHP ? (original) (raw)

Last Updated : 11 Jul, 2024

We have given a string and the task is to count number of characters in a string **str in PHP. In order to do this task, we have the following methods in PHP:

Table of Content

Method 1: Using strlen() Method
Method 2: Using mb_strlen() Method
Method 3: Using iconv_strlen() Method
Method 4: Using grapheme_strlen() Method
Method 5: Using preg_match_all()
Using for Loop
Using foreach

**Method 1: Using strlen() Method

The **strlen() method is used to get the length of a given string **str. Length of the string including all the white spaces and special characters in this method.

**Syntax:

strlen( $string )

**Example :

PHP `

len=strlen(len = strlen(len=strlen(str); // Printing the result echo $len; ?>

**Method 2: Using mb_strlen() Method

The **mb_strlen() methodis used to return the number of characters in a string having character encoding. A multi-byte character is counted as 1.

**Syntax:

mb_strlen($str, $encoding);

**Note: Before using this function, install the php7.0-mbstring package using the following command:

sudo apt install php7.0-mbstring

**Example :

PHP `

len=mbstrlen(len = mb_strlen(len=mbstrlen(str); // Printing the result echo $len; ?>

**Output

**Method 3: Using iconv_strlen() Method

The **iconv_strlen() method is used to get the character count of a string, as an integer.

**Syntax:

_int iconv_strlen( _string $str,
_string $charset = ini_get("iconv.internal_encoding"))

**Example :

PHP `

len=iconvstrlen(len = iconv_strlen(len=iconvstrlen(str); // Printing the result echo $len; ?>

**Method 4: Using grapheme_strlen() Method

The **grapheme_strlen() method is used to get the string length in grapheme units (not bytes or characters).

**Syntax:

_int grapheme_strlen(_string $input)

**Example :

PHP `

len=graphemestrlen(len = grapheme_strlen(len=graphemestrlen(str); // printing the result echo $len; ?>

Method 5: Using preg_match_all()

You can count the number of characters in a string using preg_match_all() in PHP. By using a regular expression that matches each character individually, you can count the occurrences of all characters in the string.

**Example:

PHP `

string,string, string,matches); numChars=count(numChars = count(numChars=count(matches[0]); echo $numChars; // Output: 12 (including space and punctuation) ?>

Using for Loop

Using a for loop in PHP, you can count the number of characters in a string by iterating through each character until the end of the string.

**Example:

PHP `

Using foreach

In this approach we iterate through each character of the string using a foreach loop and count them.

**Example:

PHP `

Output

Number of characters: 25