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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Finding out the length of a string held within a variable Post 14007 by XXXXXXXXXX on Sunday 27th of January 2002 01:47:27 AM
Old 01-27-2002
Quote:
Originally posted by Perderabo
"length=${#variable}" works in ksh and bash.

For lower voltage shells, 'echo "$variable" | wc -c' comes close, but it includes the newline character so you need to subtract one.

length=`expr length "$variable"` used to work, but some modern versions of expr no longer support it.
so how can i get the actual length of the word?
how to subtract 1 from the 'echo "$variable" | wc -c'
?
XXXXXXXXXX
 

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EXPR(1) 						      General Commands Manual							   EXPR(1)

NAME
expr - evaluate arguments as an expression SYNOPSIS
expr arg ... DESCRIPTION
The arguments are taken as an expression. After evaluation, the result is written on the standard output. Each token of the expression is a separate argument. The operators and keywords are listed below. The list is in order of increasing precedence, with equal precedence operators grouped. expr | expr yields the first expr if it is neither null nor `0', otherwise yields the second expr. expr & expr yields the first expr if neither expr is null or `0', otherwise yields `0'. expr relop expr where relop is one of < <= = != >= >, yields `1' if the indicated comparison is true, `0' if false. The comparison is numeric if both expr are integers, otherwise lexicographic. expr + expr expr - expr addition or subtraction of the arguments. expr * expr expr / expr expr % expr multiplication, division, or remainder of the arguments. expr : expr The matching operator compares the string first argument with the regular expression second argument; regular expression syntax is the same as that of ed(1). The (...) pattern symbols can be used to select a portion of the first argument. Otherwise, the matching operator yields the number of characters matched (`0' on failure). ( expr ) parentheses for grouping. Examples: To add 1 to the Shell variable a: a=`expr $a + 1` To find the filename part (least significant part) of the pathname stored in variable a, which may or may not contain `/': expr $a : '.*/(.*)' '|' $a Note the quoted Shell metacharacters. SEE ALSO
ed(1), sh(1), test(1) DIAGNOSTICS
Expr returns the following exit codes: 0 if the expression is neither null nor `0', 1 if the expression is null or `0', 2 for invalid expressions. EXPR(1)
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