PHP reference

mb_strlen

Returns the number of characters in a string.

Available since: PHP 4

Syntax

mb_strlen(string $string, ?string $encoding = null): int

Parameter	Type	Description
$string	string	The string to measure.
$encoding	?string	The encoding. Defaults to the internal encoding, usually UTF-8.

intThe number of characters in the string.

Length is counted in characters whatever the language:

<?php
 
echo mb_strlen('привет'), "\n";
echo mb_strlen('hello');

Output:

6
5

Checking a length limit:

<?php
 
$name = 'Александр';
 
var_dump(mb_strlen($name) <= 10);

Output:

bool(true)

Use mb_strlen() for any user-entered text: plain strlen() returns bytes and counts Cyrillic text as twice as long.

Strings — Working with strings in PHP — quotes, concatenation, length, searching, replacing and multibyte functions.