Check string length

[thefollower]

Is there a way to check a variables character count and also to strip out spaces so :

 

cheese bacon ham = cheesebaconham = 14 characters.. then some how assign the 14 to a variable also ?

[Barand]

<?php

$var = 'cheese bacon ham';

$count = strlen(str_replace (' ', '', $var));

?>

[thefollower]

thank you.. one other quick question say you wanted to use only numbers and letters... how can you strip away all the symbols on the input ... is there a built in function to do this?

[DyslexicDog]

You want to use regex, unfortunately I know nothing regex maybe someone else on the board here can give you a hand.

[Barand]

you could create an array of illegal characters

<?php
$remove = array (' ', '#', '?', '$', '*');

$var = 'che$ese ba#con h?a*m';

$count = strlen(str_replace ($remove, '', $var));

echo $count;       // 14
?>

[thefollower]

it wont let me do all the symbols though, if i do | or + or = for example even when surrounded by ' ' symbols it is acting like its waiting for me to do something with it rather than class it as a char...

 

Only these ones work:

 

$remove = array ('#', '?', '$', '*', '"', ';', ':', '~', '!', '£', '%', '^', '&', '(', ')', ']', '[', '{', '}', '<', '>', ',', '.', '/', '`', '¬', '_');
$count = strlen(str_replace ($remove, '', $NewCode));

 

Not all of them are there as you can see

[Barand]

Odd

 

<?php
$remove = array ('|', '+', '=');

$str = 'abc|def+gh=k';

$count = strlen(str_replace($remove, '', $str));

echo $count;         // --> 9

?>

[kellz]

here is another way...

 

function Alphanumeric($data) {
   $NewString='';
   preg_match_all("/[a-zA-Z0-9]/", $data, $_);
   for ($i=0;$i < count($_[0]);$i++) $NewString .= str_replace(" ", "", $_[0][$i]);
   return $NewString . ' ' . $i;
}

echo Alphanumeric('test+TEST123=tEsT_');

 

the result will show only alphanumeric characters and the size of the string will be appended to it, the output of the string used in this example would be: testTEST123tEsT 15

 

ok everyone already helped but i couldn't resist!^^ pweaase forgive me!