Count number of characters
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Counting number of characters (or bytes) in different approaches
| String example | Number of characters | Number of bytes |
|---|---|---|
| fox | 3 | 3 |
| The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog | 43 | 43 |
| 狐 | 1 | 3 |
| 象 | 1 | 3 |
| 🐘 | 1 | 4 |
| 敏捷的棕毛狐狸從懶狗身上躍過 | 14 | 28 |
How to count characters with PHP
- PHP: strlen & PHP mb_strlen function
Number of characters
echo mb_strlen("狐", 'UTF-8') . PHP_EOL; // return 1
echo mb_strlen("《王大文 Dawen》", 'UTF-8') . PHP_EOL; // return 11
String length (number of bytes)
echo strlen("狐") . PHP_EOL; // return 3
echo strlen("《王大文 Dawen》") . PHP_EOL; // return 21
Number of words 
str_word_count function not support Chinese characters
echo str_word_count("The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"); // return 9
echo str_word_count("敏捷的棕毛狐狸從懶狗身上躍過"); // return 0
How to count characters with MySQL
- MySQL: MySQL CHAR_LENGTH() function
// number of characters
SELECT CHAR_LENGTH("狐"); /* return 1 */
SELECT CHAR_LENGTH("《王大文 Dawen》"); /* return 11 */
// number of bytes
SELECT LENGTH("狐"); /* return 3 */
SELECT LENGTH("《王大文 Dawen》"); /* return 21 */
- MySQL :: MySQL 8.0 Reference Manual :: 11.4.1 The CHAR and VARCHAR Types e.g. VARCHAR(5) or CHAR(5) means can hold up to 5 characters.
How to count characters with SQLite
Length function
SELECT LENGTH("狐"); /* return 1 */
SELECT LENGTH("《王大文 Dawen》"); /* return 11 */
How to count characters with Excel
- Excel: LEN, LENB functions / LEN、LENB 函數 Result of the function LENB is not the same with the result in other programming language.
// number of characters
=LEN("狐") // return 1
=LEN("《王大文 Dawen》") // return 11
// number of bytes
=LENB("狐") // return 2
=LENB("《王大文 Dawen》") // return 16
How to count characters with BASH
Step1: Using Linux wc command
# print the character counts of txt files (contains the count of return symbol) wc -m *.txt # print the newline counts of txt files wc -l *.txt # print the whitespaces counts of txt files grep -c ' ' *.txt
Step2: Check the Return symbol
- e.g. \r\n costs 2 characters
Step3: final formula
Number of characters (not contains the return symbol) = result of wc -m *.txt - result of wc -m *.txt * 2 - 1 (the last blank line costs 1 character) - number of the whitespaces
How to count characters with Python
Using the len() function[1]. Try it on replit.
Get the number of characters in a string in Python
string = "狐" print(len(string)) // returns 1
Get the number of bytes in a string in Python
string = "狐"
print(len(string.encode('utf-8')))
// returns 3
print(len(string.encode('utf-16-le')))
// returns 2
How to count characters with JavaScript
Using the length() function and Blob object [2].
Get the number of characters in a string in JavaScript
var string = "狐" console.log(string.length);
Get the number of bytes in a string in JavaScript
var string = "狐" console.log(new Blob([string]).size); // returns 3