This tutorial will show you how to count the number of words in a string using PHP. Counting the number of words is not exactly easy, as it will depend on which characters are considered separators. For many languages, the str_word_count function will however be sufficient, and this is also the function that we will be using in this PHP tutorial.
The str_word_count function will count words in a string. Valid words will only contain alphabetic characters, which may contain but not start with "'" and "-" characters.
The below script will return the number of words found in the $str variable.
The above script should count 18 words, as word-count will count as one word.
Return an array of words in a string
It can sometimes also be useful to know how to return an array containing all the words in the string, one way to do that, is by using a parameter value of 1 instead of 0. We will be using a while loop in this tutorial, to return each word one by one. Example follows:
The above should be a useful reference. You can easily change the loop to do whatever you want to have done with the words.