How can PHP beginners differentiate between deprecated functions and current standards when implementing counters?

PHP beginners can differentiate between deprecated functions and current standards by referring to the official PHP documentation, which clearly marks deprecated functions and provides alternative solutions. When implementing counters, beginners should use the current standard functions like `count()` for arrays and `strlen()` for strings instead of deprecated functions like `sizeof()` or `count_chars()`.

// Using count() for arrays
$array = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
$count = count($array);
echo $count;

// Using strlen() for strings
$string = "Hello, World!";
$length = strlen($string);
echo $length;