PHP count_chars() Function: Description, Parameters, Return Values, and Usage Example

count_chars() returns information about the characters used in a string.

Parameters

string : The string to be analyzed.

mode : Determines the format of the returned value (0‑4).

Return values

Depending on mode, count_chars() returns:

0 – an array with all byte values as keys and their occurrence counts as values.

1 – same as 0 but only bytes with a count greater than zero.

2 – same as 0 but only bytes with a count equal to zero.

3 – a string containing all used byte values.

4 – a string containing all unused byte values.

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.
";
}
?>

The script outputs the number of occurrences for each character, such as:

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.
...