The count_chars() function counts the frequency of every possible byte value (0-255) in a string. It returns either an array or a string, depending on the mode you specify.
The Modes
- 0: Array with all byte values as keys and their counts.
- 1: Array with only byte values that appear in the string.
- 2: Array with byte values that do not appear.
- 3: String containing all unique characters used.
- 4: String containing characters not used.
Example (Mode 1)
This example finds how many times each character appears in a string.
<?php
$str = "Hello";// Mode 1: Only returns characters that actually exist
foreach (count_chars($str, 1) as $byte => $count) {
echo "Character " . chr($byte) . " appears $count time(s). ";
}
?>
Output:
Character H appears 1 time(s).
Character e appears 1 time(s).
Character l appears 2 time(s).
Character o appears 1 time(s).
Note: This function counts single bytes, not UTF-8 characters. For multi-byte text (like Hindi), use mb_str_split() or similar functions instead.