string-length - print string lengths — fish-shell 4.9.2 documentation

# string-length - print string lengths

## Synopsis

    string length [-q | --quiet] [-V | --visible] [STRING ...]

## Description

`string length` reports the length of each string argument in characters. Exit status: 0 if at least one non-empty STRING was given, or 1 otherwise.

With -V or --visible, it uses the visible width of the arguments. That means it will discount escape sequences fish knows about, account for $fish_emoji_width and $fish_ambiguous_width. It will also count each line (separated by `\n`) on its own, and with a carriage return (`\r`) count only the widest stretch on a line. The intent is to measure the number of columns the STRING would occupy in the current terminal.

## Examples

    >_ string length 'hello, world'
    12

    >_ set str foo
    >_ string length -q $str; echo $status
    0
    # Equivalent to test -n "$str"

    >_ string length --visible (set_color red)foobar
    # the set_color is discounted, so this is the width of "foobar"
    6

    >_ string length --visible 🐟🐟🐟🐟
    # depending on $fish_emoji_width, this is either 4 or 8
    # in new terminals it should be
    8

    >_ string length --visible abcdef\r123
    # this displays as "123def", so the width is 6
    6

    >_ string length --visible a\nbc
    # counts "a" and "bc" as separate lines, so it prints width for each
    1
    2