What is the difference between strlen() and mb_strlen() in PHP?

strlen() returns the length of a string in bytes. mb_strlen() returns the length in characters. For English letters both are same, but for other languages they are different, because one character can use many bytes.

<?php
$english = "PHP";
$hindi = "नमस्ते";

echo strlen($english) . "<br>";
echo strlen($hindi) . "<br>";
echo mb_strlen($hindi, "UTF-8");
?>

Output:

The Hindi word has 6 characters, but it takes 18 bytes in UTF-8. So use mb_strlen() whenever the text can have non-English letters, emoji or accents. It needs the mbstring extension, which is enabled in most servers.

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