strlen() and unicode

[phpnewbie112]

Hello I usually use strlen($text) to count the total characters of a text but how can I do it with unicode text? I tried it but it is returning false values.

[premiso]

<?php
function ustrlen($s) {
  $a = preg_split("//u", $s);
  $i = -2;
  foreach ($a as $b)
    $i++;
  return $i;
}
?>

 

Found on the first user comment at strlen manual.

[Mchl]

mb_strlen for multibyte safe strlen()

[phpnewbie112]

premiso I already tried it but did not work

[Maq]

I think you need to use html_entities_decode()

[phpnewbie112]

unfortunately none of them is returning the correct count

[Mchl]

Did you try mb_string functions?

[Maq]

strlen(html_entity_decode($string));