PHP File: Counting Characters and Words in File

PHP File Tips - Part 10: With little trick, you can count number of character or word in a file. Read file into string, then use strlen() or str_word_count(). Like this:

<?php
$f = "test.txt";

// read into string
$str = file_get_contents($f);

// count characters
$numChar = strlen($str);
echo "This file have ". $numChar . " character(s)";

// count characters withour spaces
$str2 = ereg_replace('[[:space:]]+', '', $str);
$numChar = strlen($str2);
echo "This file have ". $numChar . " character(s) without spaces";

// count words
$numWords = str_word_count($str);
echo "This file have ". $numWords . " words";

?>