SHIP:Sail:length

Function	Returns	Introduced	Description
length	Integer	v2.0	Returns the length in characters (not bytes) of a string.

See Also:

• Sail Home
• Sail Functions
• Sail String Functions

Prototype

Integer length(String s);

Parameters/Return Value

Parameter	Data Type	Description
s	String	String to measure
Return	Integer	number of characters in the string

Detailed Description

The length function returns the number of characters in a string. Strings are null terminated, and this terminating null is not included in the count. Since all strings in SHIP are UTF-8 encoded, a given character may be 1, 2, 3, or even more bytes in length. For example, the ™ symbol (Unicode-16 0x2123) requires 3 bytes in UTF-8 but is only considered a single character.

Examples

Example	Result	Notes
length("hello");	5
length("");	0
length("™");	1	™ is three bytes in UTF-8 but is only one character