hanki.dev

Check string length from terminal

Sometimes at work I need to check some string's length. Here's how to do it from terminal:

printf hanki.dev | wc -c

I use printf instead of echo, since echo adds newline to the end, which increases the length by 1. I've made a command for it to simplify things:

// .zshrc
len() {
    printf "$*" | wc -c
}

Now I can just call it with len hanki.dev 🤑 Since "$*" catches all the arguments, the func works even with sentences with spaces:

len this is a sentence

If you have some special case, like 2 spaces in a row, you can always wrap your string in quotes which makes it safer:

len "this  is a    sentence"

#terminal