Utf8 string length

Question

strlen() Function in php could not correctly return utf8 string length, for example سلام is 4 char, but after using strlen thats will return 8 chr

 <?php echo strlen('سلام'); ?> 

Answer 1

The basic functions of a PHP string all take 1 character = 1 byte. They have no concept of different encodings. To find out how many characters are in a UTF-8 string (not so many bytes), use the equivalent of mb_strlen and tell what encoding the string is in:

 echo mb_strlen('سلام', 'UTF-8'); 

Answer 2

You can get the number of UTF-8 code points inside a PHP binary string (provided that it is valid in UTF-8 encoding) ( Demo ):

 $length = preg_match_all('(.)su', $subject); 

You can also use the multibyte extension if it is installed:

 $length = mb_strlen($subject, 'UTF-8'); 

See also: PHP UTF-8 String