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PHP

Shon Levi
Shon Levi
6,036 Points
Posted by Shon Levi
Shon Levi
6,036 Points

Multibyte String Functions

Hey, I understand the need of Multibyte String Functions on an app/web but I want to understand now two things:

1 - I tried to work with mb_strlen without define mb_internal_encoding or mb_http_output and it worked great - there are some default values for it? why it worked?

2 - If it has a default values for UTF-8 - why we should use strlen? we can use all the time mb_strlen - if the user will input some problematic characaters it will convert it and if no it will work perfect either? why I need strlen?

1 Answer

Codin - Codesmite
Codin - Codesmite
8,600 Points
Codin - Codesmite
Codin - Codesmite
8,600 Points

strlen counts bytes and not characters, for example the character ü is infact 2 bytes. It is useful when counting binary strings.

<?php

$str = "Tschüss";
echo strlen($str); // Will output 8 as ü is 2 bytes.

echo mb_strlen($str,'UTF-8'); // Will output 7

?>