The mb_strlen Function
The mb_strlen function returns the number of characters in a string, working correctly with multibyte encodings (for example, UTF-8). Unlike strlen, it correctly counts characters that occupy multiple bytes. It accepts the string as the first parameter and the encoding as the second (optional) parameter.
Syntax
mb_strlen(string, [encoding]);
Example
Counting string length in UTF-8:
<?php
$res = mb_strlen('Привет', 'UTF-8');
echo $res;
?>
Code execution result:
6
Example
Comparison with strlen for Cyrillic:
<?php
$str = 'тест';
echo 'strlen: ' . strlen($str) . '<br>';
echo 'mb_strlen: ' . mb_strlen($str, 'UTF-8');
?>
Code execution result:
strlen: 8
mb_strlen: 4
Example
Usage without specifying encoding
(encoding is taken from mb_internal_encoding):
<?php
echo mb_strlen('abcde');
?>
Code execution result:
5
