Problem with length of Multibyte String

Hi all,
I want to write some UTF-8 Chinese characters to file with following
php codes:

<code>
.......
$fp = fopen($filepath,'wb');
fwrite($fp,$utf8string,strlen($utf8string));
fclose($fp);
........
</code>

Problem happened on function "strlen". utf-8 string consists of
multibye characters. Every characters have more than one byte. But to
function "strlen", every character is just one byte.
Take Chinese character "我" for example, its utf-8 code is "0xE6
0x88 0x91“，obviously 3 bytes, but strlen return 1 byte. And then
function "fwrite" just write 1 byte to the file.
So I wonder if there are any way to get actural length of multibyte
string in PHP?
Thank you for suggestions!

*** lian escribió/wrote (Sun, 05 Sep 2004 17:27:28 +0800):
> Problem happened on function "strlen". utf-8 string consists of
> multibye characters. Every characters have more than one byte. But to
> function "strlen", every character is just one byte.

There's a chapter in PHP manual titled "Multi-Byte String Functions". There
you have info about mb_strlen().

It's an extension so if it isn't installed in your server you'll probably
have to write your own function. There're some user comments about it in
strlent() manual page.

In any case, please note that the length parameter in fwrite is optional.
If not set, it'll write the whole string.

--
--
-+ Álvaro G. Vicario - Burgos, Spain - ICQ 46788716
+- http://www.demogracia.com (la web de humor para mayores de 100 años)
++ «Sonríe, que te vamos a hacer una foto para la esquela»
--

lian wrote:
> Problem happened on function "strlen". utf-8 string consists of
> multibye characters. Every characters have more than one byte. But to
> function "strlen", every character is just one byte.

Is mbstring.func_overload on? If so, this is overridding the normal
strlen function with mb_strlen which returns the number of characters
instead of bytes. Try turning it off.

See http://www.php.net/mb_string

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

"lian" <lian@fed.com> wrote in message news:2q04g4Fokjp2U1@uni-berlin.de...
> Hi all,
> I want to write some UTF-8 Chinese characters to file with following
> php codes:
>
> <code>
> .......
> $fp = fopen($filepath,'wb');
> fwrite($fp,$utf8string,strlen($utf8string));
> fclose($fp);
> ........
> </code>
>
> Problem happened on function "strlen". utf-8 string consists of
> multibye characters. Every characters have more than one byte. But to
> function "strlen", every character is just one byte.
> Take Chinese character "?" for example, its utf-8 code is "0xE6
> 0x88 0x91",obviously 3 bytes, but strlen return 1 byte. And then
> function "fwrite" just write 1 byte to the file.
> So I wonder if there are any way to get actural length of multibyte
> string in PHP?

First you all, you don't need to pass the length to fwrite() if you want to
whole string written. Just fwrite($fp, $utf8string) will do.

Second, your description of strlen() is wrong. It returns the byte count,
never the Unicode character count.