A string is a sequence of characters, like "Hello world!".

Strings

Strings in PHP are surrounded by either double quotation marks, or single quotation marks.

echo "Hello";
echo 'Hello';

Double or Single Quotes?

You can use double or single quotes, but you should be aware of the differences between the two.

Double quoted strings perform action on special characters.

E.g. when there is a variable in the string, it returns the value of the variable:

$x = "John";
echo "Hello $x";

Single quoted strings does not perform such actions, it returns the string like it was written, with the variable name:

$x = "John";
echo 'Hello $x';

String Length

The PHP strlen() function returns the length of a string.

echo strlen("Hello world!");

Word Count

The PHP str_word_count() function counts the number of words in a string.

echo str_word_count("Hello world!");

Search For Text Within a String

The PHP strpos() function searches for a specific text within a string.

If a match is found, the function returns the character position of the first match. If no match is found, it will return FALSE.

echo strpos("Hello world!", "world");

Tip: The first character position in a string is 0 (not 1).

Complete PHP String Reference

For a complete reference of all string functions, go to our complete PHP String Reference.

The PHP string reference contains description and example of use, for each function!

PHP Exercises

echo ("Hello World!");