php check if variable length equals a value

Question

Need to check if $message length is 7 characters or less, if so, do action A, if not, do action B. Is this correct syntax? I think im doing something wrong?

<?
if (strlen($message) <= 7){
echo $actiona;
}
else
{
echo $actionb;
}
?>

Answer 1

It's fine. For example, let's run the following:

<?php

$message = "Hello there!";

if (strlen($message) <= 7){
    echo "It is less than or equal to 7 characters.";
} 
else 
{
    echo "It is greater than 7 characters.";
}
?>

It will print: "It is greater than 7 characters."

Answer 2

What error messages are you receiving?

I would check that when you set $message before hand, you haven't misspelt it or used incorrect capitalization (keeping in mind that php is cAsE sensitive).

Answer 3

That's OK.

But you should use long php tags (short tags can be disabled ; and quite often are) :

<?php
// ... PHP code
?>

(closing tag being optional, if your file contains only PHP)

Answer 4

You might also want to use the PHP shorthand if/else using the ternary operators (?:). For example, instead of

<?php if (strlen($message) <= 7) { echo $actiona; } else { echo $actionb; } ?>

you can write it as

<?php echo strlen($message) <= 7 ? $actiona : $actionb; ?>