Strlen doesn't count the characters correctly

Question

That's my code

$devmsg = $db->real_escape_string($_POST['devmsg']);
if(strlen($devmsg) <= 200) {
do something
} else {
do some other thing
}

When I add to the message some special chars such as "(" "[" "." "{" and so on the strlen() counts wrong.. If my message is ~160-180 characters long and there are specials chars in it , the if operator just returns false and goes to else.. I thought the problem's here $db->real_escape_string and then removed it but still got the same result.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13159953/strlen-is-not-giving-correct-output — dognose, Dec 10 '14 at 18:38
Does your string contain multibyte characters? edit: To slow. But in case you might want to read: http://stackoverflow.com/q/11034058/2912456 — Rangad, Dec 10 '14 at 18:39

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 10 '14 at 18:40

3

Might be a UTF-8 problem.

Try to pass the text through utf8_decode() first:

<?php 
$length = strlen(utf8_decode($s)); 
?>

utf8_decode() converts characters that are not in ISO-8859-1 to '?', which, for the purpose of counting, is quite alright.

answered Dec 10 '14 at 18:40

Hebrus

133
6

This works perfectly and it seems that's the easiest way. I'll chose your answer in 7 minutes. – tsvmitev Dec 10 '14 at 18:43

Strlen doesn't count the characters correctly

1 Answers1