Diff for "BashFAQ/007"

Differences between revisions 2 and 3

Is there a function to return the length of a string?

The fastest way, not requiring external programs (but usable only with BASH and KornShell):

${#varname}

or for Bourne shells:

expr "$varname" : '.*'

(expr prints the number of characters matching the pattern .*, which is the length of the string.)

Another one:

expr length "$varname"

(This is for a BSD/GNU version of expr. Do not use this, because it is not POSIX).

-  ⇤ ← Revision 2 as of 2008-11-22 14:08:37 → 
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  Editor: localhost
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+   ← Revision 3 as of 2008-11-22 21:07:00 → ⇥
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  Editor: GreyCat
  Comment: first-line; also a bit more explicit wording
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-({{{expr}}} prints the number of characters matching the pattern {{{.*}}}, which is the length of the string)
+({{{expr}}} prints the number of characters matching the pattern {{{.*}}}, which is the length of the string.)
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-(for a BSD/GNU version of {{{expr}}}. Do not use this, because it is not [[POSIX]]).
+(This is for a BSD/GNU version of {{{expr}}}. Do not use this, because it is not [[POSIX]]).