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:
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
<?php // PHP program to count all // characters in a string     $str = " Geeks for Geeks ";     // Using strlen() function to // get the length of string $len = strlen($str);   // Printing the result echo $len; ?> |
19
Method 2: Using mb_strlen() Method: The mb_strlen() method is used to return the number of characters in a string having character encoding. A multi-byte character is counted as 1.
Syntax:
mb_strlen($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
<?php // PHP program to count all // characters in a string     $str = " Geeks for Geeks ";     // Using mb_strlen() function // to get the length of string $len = mb_strlen($str);   // Printing the result echo $len; ?> |
Output
19
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
<?php // PHP program to count number // of characters in a string     $str = " Geeks for Geeks ";     // Using iconv_strlen() function // to get the length of string $len = iconv_strlen($str);   // Printing the result echo $len; ?> |
19
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
<?php // PHP program to count number // of characters in a string     $str = " Geeks for Geeks ";     // Using grapheme_strlen() function // to get the length of string $len = grapheme_strlen($str);   // printing the result echo $len; ?> |
19
