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Finding out the length of a string held within a variable

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# 1  
Old 01-11-2002
Network Finding out the length of a string held within a variable
Smilie Does anyone know which command I can use to find out the length of a string held within a variable?
# 2  
Old 01-11-2002
"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 "$variable"` used to work, but some modern versions of expr no longer support it.
# 3  
Old 01-11-2002
Computer Superb
Smilie Thank you very much for your help
# 4  
Old 01-27-2002
Quote:
Originally posted by Perderabo
"length=${#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
# 5  
Old 02-09-2002
This was done on a Dynix/ptx 4.4.8 OS. (the NUMA-Q system formerly known as Sequent)

off_count=`echo "$variable" | wc -c`

or

off_count=$(echo "$variable" |wc -c)

Then the next two commands will calculate and display the result.

(( ok_count = $off_count - 1 ))
echo $ok_count
thekid
# 6  
Old 02-19-2002
try ...

let count=`$variable | wc -c`-1
echo $count

Smilie
inquirer
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