PHP function strlen() – Get string length

The strlen() function is used to return the length of a specific string. This function was introduced in PHP3. The strlen() function takes just one parameter (the string) and returns the number of characters in it.

Syntax:

strlen(string $string): int

Behind the scenes, strlen() actually counts the number of bytes in your string, as opposed to the number of characters. It is for this reason that multibyte strings should be measured with mb_strlen().

Parameters

Parameter Description
string The string being measured for length.

Return Values

Returns the number of characters in a string, and 0 if the string is empty.

Examples

Example 1:

print strlen("Foo") . "\n"; // 3
print strlen("Goodbye, Perl!") . "\n"; // 14

Example 2:

<?php
$text = 'aeiou';
echo strlen($text)."<br>";
$str = ' ab cd ';
echo strlen($str);
?>

The output of the above program is:

5
7

Example 3:

<?php
$str = 'abcdef';
echo strlen($str); // 6

$str = ' ab cd ';
echo strlen($str); // 7
?>
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