size of binary string on multi-byte system?

[Mark]

hello!

normally, if you are given binary data in a string (such as from a call to
fread), you can call the strlen function on this string to get its size:

$buffer = fread($file, 100000);
if (strlen($buffer ) < 100000)
{
echo "read less than 100000 bytes";
}
etc

now, the problem is, on systems where you have the mbstring extension
turned on, and are using function substitution to replace strlen with
mb_strlen, you are pretty much guaranteed to get a WRONG value back from
strlen, since it will find some multi-byte lead characters in that binary
file eventually.

so the question is:

are there any other methods to find the length of a string besides strlen?
the only way i can see to not screw myself right now is to not use function
substitution. any other options?

thanks,
mark.


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[Daniel Tryba]

Re: size of binary string on multi-byte system?

Mark <mw@angrylanfea r.com> wrote:[color=blue]
> so the question is:
>
> are there any other methods to find the length of a string besides strlen?
> the only way i can see to not screw myself right now is to not use function
> substitution. any other options?[/color]

I'd guess that "mb_strlen($str ,'8bit')" would give you the actual
number of bytes in the string.

Checking.... http://nl3.php.net/mb_strlen the only comment:
If you wish to find the byte length of a multi-byte string when you are
using mbstring.func_o verload 2 and UTF-8 strings, then you can use the
following:

mb_strlen($utf8 _string, 'latin1');

latin1 is also a 8bit encoding, only there are ranges not defined:
0x7fz<0xa0

8bit sounds better IMHO.

[Chung Leong]

Re: size of binary string on multi-byte system?


"Mark" <mw@ANGRYLanfea r.com> wrote in message
news:rpCdnfkrdq i5FZ_fRVn-1A@nventure.com ...[color=blue]
>
> hello!
>
> normally, if you are given binary data in a string (such as from a call[/color]
to[color=blue]
> fread), you can call the strlen function on this string to get its size:
>
> $buffer = fread($file, 100000);
> if (strlen($buffer ) < 100000)
> {
> echo "read less than 100000 bytes";
> }
> etc
>
> now, the problem is, on systems where you have the mbstring extension
> turned on, and are using function substitution to replace strlen with
> mb_strlen, you are pretty much guaranteed to get a WRONG value back from
> strlen, since it will find some multi-byte lead characters in that binary
> file eventually.
>
> so the question is:
>
> are there any other methods to find the length of a string besides[/color]
strlen?[color=blue]
> the only way i can see to not screw myself right now is to not use[/color]
function[color=blue]
> substitution. any other options?
>
> thanks,
> mark.[/color]

array_sum(count _chars($s)), maybe?

[Mark]

Re: size of binary string on multi-byte system?

Chung Leong wrote:
[color=blue]
>[color=green]
>> are there any other methods to find the length of a string besides[/color]
> strlen?[color=green]
>> the only way i can see to not screw myself right now is to not use[/color]
> function[color=green]
>> substitution. any other options?
>>
>> thanks,
>> mark.[/color]
>
> array_sum(count _chars($s)), maybe?[/color]


the best solution so far appears to be mb_strlen($buf, '8bit')

thanks to all.
mark.



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