How to find number of characters in a string in PHP ?

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;
?>

Output

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;
?>

Output

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;
?>

Output

19