What is the function of strlen() in PHP and how does it determine the length of a string?

The function strlen() in PHP is used to determine the length of a string. It returns the number of characters in a string, including spaces and special characters. This function is useful when you need to validate the length of user input or manipulate strings based on their length.

// Example of using strlen() function to determine the length of a string
$string = "Hello, World!";
$length = strlen($string);
echo "The length of the string is: " . $length;