<?php
$f = "test.txt";

// get string
$str = file_get_contents($f);

// count characters
$numChar = strlen($str);
echo "This file has ". $numChar . " character(s)";

// count characters without spaces
$str2 = ereg_replace('[[:space:]]+', '', $str);
$numChar = strlen($str2);
echo "This file has ". $numChar . " character(s) without spaces";

// count words
$numWords = str_word_count($str);
echo "This file has ". $numWords . " words";

?>

Counting Characters in PHP

PHP