How to get the length of longest string in a PHP array

In PHP, you can find the length of the longest string in an array by combining array_map() and max() functions. The array_map() function applies strlen() to each element, and max() returns the highest value.

Syntax

$max_length = max(array_map('strlen', $array));

Example

Here's how to find the longest string length in a PHP array −

<?php
$array = array("a", "Ab", "abcd", "abcdfegh", "achn");
$max_len = max(array_map('strlen', $array));
echo "Length of longest string: " . $max_len;
?>

Length of longest string: 8

How It Works

The process involves two steps:

• array_map('strlen', $array) creates a new array containing the length of each string
• max() function finds the maximum value from the length array

Alternative Approach

You can also use a loop for more control over the process −

<?php
$array = array("hello", "world", "programming", "php");
$max_length = 0;

foreach($array as $string) {
    $length = strlen($string);
    if($length > $max_length) {
        $max_length = $length;
    }
}

echo "Maximum length: " . $max_length;
?>

Maximum length: 11

Conclusion

The max(array_map('strlen', $array)) approach is the most concise method for finding the longest string length in a PHP array. For simple cases, this one-liner solution is preferred over manual loops.