Six Cool PHP Tricks You May Not Know

"Over the years I've come across some useful tricks in PHP that are not obvious, but are worth mentioning. This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of all the useful tricks that you can do with PHP.

"1. Count Characters in a String To do this, I've usually just used the function strlen(). However, there is a faster method. Take a look at the following code example:

Related Stories:

• Mitigate the Security Risks of PHP System Command Execution(Jan 29, 2010)
• A Twist In Namespaces: A New Revolution in PHP(Aug 28, 2009)
• The ABC's of PHP - Part 10 - The Final Installment(Jun 03, 2009)
• Loops & Decisions in PHP - The ABC's of PHP Part 8(May 19, 2009)
• Introduction to Arrays and Hashes in PHP - The ABC's of PHP Part 7(May 06, 2009)
• Math & Number Handling in PHP - The ABCs of PHP Part 6(Apr 21, 2009)
• The ABC's of PHP Part 5 - Strings & Text(Apr 15, 2009)