PHP 5 String Functions

A string is a sequence of characters, like "Hello world!".

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PHP String Functions

In this chapter we will look at some commonly used functions to manipulate strings.

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The PHP strlen() function

The strlen() function returns the length of a string, in characters.
The example below returns the length of the string "Hello world!":

Example

<?php
echo strlen("Hello world!");
?>

The output of the code above will be: 12
Tip: strlen() is often used in loops or other functions, when it is important to know when a string ends. (i.e. in a loop, we might want to stop the loop after the last character in a string).

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The PHP strpos() function

The strpos() function is used to search for a specified character or text within a string.
If a match is found, it will return the character position of the first match. If no match is found, it will return FALSE.
The example below searches for the text "world" in the string "Hello world!":

Example

<?php
echo strpos("Hello world!","world");
?>

The output of the code above will be: 6.
Tip: The position of the string "world" in the example above is 6. The reason that it is 6 (and not 7), is that the first character position in the string is 0, and not 1.