Length of string in bash

To get the length of a string stored in a variable, say:

myvar="some string"
size=${#myvar} 

To confirm it was properly saved, echo it:

$ echo "$size"
11

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UTF-8 string length

In addition to fedorqui's correct answer, I would like to show the difference between string length and byte length:

myvar='Généralités'
chrlen=${#myvar}
oLang=$LANG oLcAll=$LC_ALL
LANG=C LC_ALL=C
bytlen=${#myvar}
LANG=$oLang LC_ALL=$oLcAll
printf "%s is %d char len, but %d bytes len.\n" "${myvar}" $chrlen $bytlen

will render:

Généralités is 11 char len, but 14 bytes len.

you could even have a look at stored chars:

myvar='Généralités'
chrlen=${#myvar}
oLang=$LANG oLcAll=$LC_ALL
LANG=C LC_ALL=C
bytlen=${#myvar}
printf -v myreal "%q" "$myvar"
LANG=$oLang LC_ALL=$oLcAll
printf "%s has %d chars, %d bytes: (%s).\n" "${myvar}" $chrlen $bytlen "$myreal"

will answer:

Généralités has 11 chars, 14 bytes: ($'G\303\251n\303\251ralit\303\251s').

Nota: According to Isabell Cowan's comment, I've added setting to $LC_ALL along with $LANG.

Length of an argument, working sample

Argument work same as regular variables

showStrLen() {
    local bytlen sreal oLang=$LANG oLcAll=$LC_ALL
    LANG=C LC_ALL=C
    bytlen=${#1}
    printf -v sreal %q "$1"
    LANG=$oLang LC_ALL=$oLcAll
    printf "String '%s' is %d bytes, but %d chars len: %s.\n" "$1" $bytlen ${#1} "$sreal"
}

will work as

showStrLen théorème
String 'théorème' is 10 bytes, but 8 chars len: $'th\303\251or\303\250me'

Useful printf correction tool:

If you:

for string in Généralités Language Théorème Février  "Left: ←" "Yin Yang ☯";do
    printf " - %-14s is %2d char length\n" "'$string'"  ${#string}
done

 - 'Généralités' is 11 char length
 - 'Language'     is  8 char length
 - 'Théorème'   is  8 char length
 - 'Février'     is  7 char length
 - 'Left: ←'    is  7 char length
 - 'Yin Yang ☯' is 10 char length

Not really pretty output!

For this, here is a little function:

strU8DiffLen() {
    local charlen=${#1} LANG=C LC_ALL=C
    return $(( ${#1} - charlen ))
}

or written in one line:

strU8DiffLen() { local chLen=${#1} LANG=C LC_ALL=C;return $((${#1}-chLen));}

Then now:

for string in Généralités Language Théorème Février  "Left: ←" "Yin Yang ☯";do
    strU8DiffLen "$string"
    printf " - %-$((14+$?))s is %2d chars length, but uses %2d bytes\n" \
        "'$string'" ${#string} $((${#string}+$?))
  done 

 - 'Généralités'  is 11 chars length, but uses 14 bytes
 - 'Language'     is  8 chars length, but uses  8 bytes
 - 'Théorème'     is  8 chars length, but uses 10 bytes
 - 'Février'      is  7 chars length, but uses  8 bytes
 - 'Left: ←'      is  7 chars length, but uses  9 bytes
 - 'Yin Yang ☯'   is 10 chars length, but uses 12 bytes

Unfortunely, this is not perfect!

But there left some strange UTF-8 behaviour, like double-spaced chars, zero spaced chars, reverse deplacement and other that could not be as simple...

Have a look at diffU8test.sh or diffU8test.sh.txt for more limitations.

---

I wanted the simplest case, finally this is a result:

echo -n 'Tell me the length of this sentence.' | wc -m;
36

---

You can use:

MYSTRING="abc123"
MYLENGTH=$(printf "%s" "$MYSTRING" | wc -c)

wc -c or wc --bytes for byte counts = Unicode characters are counted with 2, 3 or more bytes.

wc -m or wc --chars for character counts = Unicode characters are counted single until they use more bytes.

---

In response to the post starting:

If you want to use this with command line or function arguments...

with the code:

size=${#1}

There might be the case where you just want to check for a zero length argument and have no need to store a variable. I believe you can use this sort of syntax:

if [ -z "$1" ]; then
    #zero length argument 
else
    #non-zero length
fi

See GNU and wooledge for a more complete list of Bash conditional expressions.

---

If you want to use this with command line or function arguments, make sure you use size=${#1} instead of size=${#$1}. The second one may be more instinctual but is incorrect syntax.

---

Using your example provided

#KISS (Keep it simple stupid)
size=${#myvar}
echo $size

---

Here is couple of ways to calculate length of variable :

echo ${#VAR}
echo -n $VAR | wc -m
echo -n $VAR | wc -c
printf $VAR | wc -m
expr length $VAR
expr $VAR : '.*'

and to set the result in another variable just assign above command with back quote into another variable as following:

otherVar=`echo -n $VAR | wc -m`   
echo $otherVar

http://techopsbook.blogspot.in/2017/09/how-to-find-length-of-string-variable.html

---

I know that the Q and A's are old enough, but today I faced this task for first time. Usually I used the ${#var} combination, but it fails with unicode: most text I process with the bash is in Cyrillic... Based on @atesin's answer, I made short (and ready to be more shortened) function which may be usable for scripting. That was a task which led me to this question: to show some message of variable length in pseudo-graphics box. So, here it is:

$ cat draw_border.sh
#!/bin/sh
#based on https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17368067/length-of-string-in-bash
border()
{
local BPAR="$1"
local BPLEN=`echo $BPAR|wc -m`
local OUTLINE=\|\ "$1"\ \|
# line below based on https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/repeat-a-character-in-bash-script-under-linux-unix/
# comment of Bit Twiddler Jun 5, 2021 @ 8:47
local OUTBORDER=\+`head -c $(($BPLEN+1))</dev/zero|tr '\0' '-'`\+
echo $OUTBORDER
echo $OUTLINE
echo $OUTBORDER
}
border "Généralités"
border 'А вот еще одна '$LESSCLOSE' '
border "pure ENGLISH"

And what this sample produces:

$ draw_border.sh
+-------------+
| Généralités |
+-------------+
+----------------------------------+
| А вот еще одна /usr/bin/lesspipe |
+----------------------------------+
+--------------+
| pure ENGLISH |
+--------------+

First example (in French?) was taken from someone's example above. Second one combines Cyrillic and the value of some variable. Third one is self-explaining: only 1s 1/2 of ASCII chars.

I used echo $BPAR|wc -m instead of printf ... in order to not rely on if the printf is buillt-in or not.

Above I saw talks about trailing newline and -n parameter for echo. I did not used it, thus I add only one to the $BPLEN. Should I use -n, I must add 2.

To explain the difference between wc -m and wc -c, see the same script with only one minor change: -m was replaced with -c

$ draw_border.sh
+----------------+
| Généralités |
+----------------+
+---------------------------------------------+
| А вот еще одна /usr/bin/lesspipe |
+---------------------------------------------+
+--------------+
| pure ENGLISH |
+--------------+

Accented characters in Latin, and most of characters in Cyrillic are two-byte, thus the length of drawn horizontals are greater than the real length of the message. Hope, it will save some one some time :-)

p.s. Russian text says "here is one more"

p.p.s. Working "two-liner"

#!/bin/sh
#based on https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17368067/length-of-string-in-bash
border()
{
# line below based on https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/repeat-a-character-in-bash-script-under-linux-unix/
# comment of Bit Twiddler Jun 5, 2021 @ 8:47
local OUTBORDER=\+`head -c $(( $(echo "$1"|wc -m) +1))</dev/zero|tr '\0' '-'`\+
echo $OUTBORDER"\n"\|\ "$1"\ \|"\n"$OUTBORDER
}
border "Généralités"
border 'А вот еще одна '$LESSCLOSE' '
border "pure ENGLISH"

In order to not clutter the code with repetitive OUTBORDER's drawing, I put the forming of OUTBORDER into separate command

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Maybe just use:

echo $myvar | wc -c

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