String Functions
PHP Manual

count_chars

Return information about characters used in a string

Description

arraystring count_chars(string $string, int $mode = 0)

Counts the number of occurrences of every byte-value (0..255) in string and returns it in various ways.

Parameters

string

The examined string.

mode

See return values.

Return Values

Depending on mode count_chars returns one of the following:

  • 0 - an array with the byte-value as key and the frequency of every byte as value.
  • 1 - same as 0 but only byte-values with a frequency greater than zero are listed.
  • 2 - same as 0 but only byte-values with a frequency equal to zero are listed.
  • 3 - a string containing all unique characters is returned.
  • 4 - a string containing all unused characters is returned.

Changelog

Version Description
8.0.0 Prior to this version, the function returned false on failure.

Examples

Example #1 count_chars example

<?php
$data = "Two Ts and one F.";

foreach (count_chars($data, 1) as $i => $val) {
   echo "There were $val instance(s) of \"" , chr($i) , "\" in the string.\n";
}
?>

The above example will output:

There were 4 instance(s) of " " in the string.
There were 1 instance(s) of "." in the string.
There were 1 instance(s) of "F" in the string.
There were 2 instance(s) of "T" in the string.
There were 1 instance(s) of "a" in the string.
There were 1 instance(s) of "d" in the string.
There were 1 instance(s) of "e" in the string.
There were 2 instance(s) of "n" in the string.
There were 2 instance(s) of "o" in the string.
There were 1 instance(s) of "s" in the string.
There were 1 instance(s) of "w" in the string.

See Also

  • strpos
  • substr_count