In this PHP tutorial, you shall learn how to loop through characters in a given string using str_split() function and foreach statement, or use the index of characters in the string with a For loop, with example programs.

PHP – Loop through Characters in String

To iterate over each character in a string, there are following two approaches.

1. Using str_split() and foreach

  1. Take a string.
  2. Split the string into an array of characters using str_split() function.
  3. Use a looping statement like for loop or while loop, to iterate over each of the element (character) in the array.

2. Using index and for loop

  1. Take a string.
  2. Initialize index to 0.
  3. Define for loop that iterates when the index is less than string length.
    1. Access character using string and index.

Examples

1. For each character in string using str_split() and foreach

In this example, we will take a string, say “apple”, and iterate over each character of the string using str_split() function and foreach statement.

PHP Program

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<?php
$str = "apple";
$chars = str_split($str);

foreach ($chars as $char) {
    echo $char;
    echo "<br>";
}
?>

Program Output

2. Iterate over characters in String using Index and For Loop

In this example, we will take a string, say “apple”, and iterate over each character of the string using index, that increments for each iteration, and for loop statement.

PHP Program

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<?php
$str = "apple";

$length = strlen($str);
for ($index = 0; $index < $length; $index++) {
    echo $str[$index];
    echo "<br>";
}
?>

Program Output

Conclusion

In this PHP Tutorial, we learned how to iterate or loop for each character in a string, using different ways in PHP.