What are some best practices for handling conditional statements in PHP when checking string length?

When checking the length of a string in PHP, it is important to handle conditional statements correctly to avoid errors. One common mistake is using the `strlen()` function directly in a conditional statement without considering the possibility of the string being empty or not set. To handle this, it is recommended to first assign the result of `strlen()` to a variable and then use that variable in the conditional statement.

$string = "Hello, World!";
$length = strlen($string);

if ($length > 0) {
    echo "The string is not empty and has a length of $length characters.";
} else {
    echo "The string is empty.";
}