PHP 7.0.6 Released

    iconv_strlen

    (PHP 5, PHP 7)

    iconv_strlen — Returns the character count of string

    Description

    int iconv_strlen ( string $str [, string $charset = ini_get("iconv.internal_encoding") ] )

    In contrast to strlen(), iconv_strlen() counts the occurrences of characters in the given byte sequence str on the basis of the specified character set, the result of which is not necessarily identical to the length of the string in byte.

    Parameters

    str

    The string.

    charset

    If charset parameter is omitted, str is assumed to be encoded in iconv.internal_encoding.

    Return Values

    Returns the character count of str, as an integer.

    See Also

    User Contributed Notes

    hfuecks @ nospam org
    10 years ago
    If iconv_strlen is passed a UTF-8 string containing badly formed sequences, it will return FALSE. This is in contrast to mb_strlen of the behaviour of utf8_decode, which strip out any bad sequences;

    <?php
    # UTF-8 string containing bad sequence: \xe9
    $str = "I�t�rn�ti�n\xe9�liz�ti�n";

    print     "mb_strlen: ".mb_strlen($str,'UTF-8')."\n";
    print     "strlen/utf8_decode: ".strlen(utf8_decode($str))."\n";
    print     "iconv_strlen: ".iconv_strlen($str,'UTF-8')."\n";
    ?>

    Displays;

    mb_strlen: 20
    strlen/utf8_decode: 20
    iconv_strlen:

    (PHP 5.0.5)

    As such it is being "stricter" than mb_strlen and it may mean you need to check for invalid sequences first. A quick way to check is to exploit the behaviour of the PCRE extension (see notes on pattern modifiers);

    <?php
    if (preg_match('/^.{1}/us',$str,$ar) != 1) {
        die(    "string contains invalid UTF-8");
    }
    ?>

    A slower but stricter check (regex) can be found at: http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-forms-utf-8

    Similiar applies to iconv_substr, iconv_strpos and iconv_strrpos
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