Number of characters in a string

How can I count the number of characters in a UTF-8 encoded string with PHP version 3.23.58?

I am using strlen(), with a converted string using utf8_decode(). Always supposing that this function converts unknown characters as single quotation marks '?'. This is enough for counting characters purpose.

However, is there a more appropiate method?

PHP Code:

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    $string = 'six@lgfhfget@;][';
    $string_count = strlen(ereg_replace('[^[:alpha:]]+', '', $string));
    echo $string_count; 


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Quote:

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Originally Posted by azz0r

PHP Code:

---

    $string = 'six@lgfhfget@;][';
    $string_count = strlen(ereg_replace('[^[:alpha:]]+', '', $string));
    echo $string_count; 


---

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Thank you, but is not working.

It returns 0 length for UTF-8 entries like this: 後味 (it should return 2)

Have a read of some of the comments here where they discuss the strlen function and UTF-8

first of all you need to decode the UTF 8 encoded string using utf8_decode() and then use strlen() because UTF8 encoded may have more than one byte in one symbol.

your php code will be like this :

echo strlen(utf8_decode($string));

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