How do I count # of char. in a word?

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

I havent done shell scripting in quite some time. I want to know how to count the number of characters in a word, specifically a parameter.

Example: myscript hello

I want "myscript" to return the number of charcaters in the parameter "hello".

Any ideas?

2

I suppose there's several ways, but one is awk:

echo "$1" | awk '{print length($0)}'

3

thanks oombera. I might use this but I'm helping a friend write a script for an Inro. to Unix class and the class doesnt cover the awk command. Could you list any other ways that you know?

and thanks for your help

4

The length of a parameter is ${#parameter}

5

please read the rules. no homework questions.

the class might not cover a command but you can bet your $$ that the teacher covered the material needed in class or as a reading assignment.

man wc.

6

Just as a sidenote, I thought of wc first, but when I used it, it returned one greater than the number of characters in each string it tested, so that "hello" would return "6"... is it counting some end-of-line character?

7

to tell you the truth i am unsure what the 6th byte is. never noticed it before.

the only thing i can think of is this snipit from the environ(5) man page.

anyone else have any insite into why wc counts more 1 more charicter or byte then is in the file?

           LC_CTYPE
                 This category  specifies  character  classifica-
                 tion, character conversion, and widths of multi-
                 byte characters. When   LC_CTYPE  is  set  to  a
                 valid value, the calling utility can display and
                 handle text  and  file  names  containing  valid
                 characters for that locale;   Extended Unix Code
                 (EUC) characters where any individual  character
                 can be 1, 2, or 3 bytes wide; and EUC characters
                 of 1, 2, or 3 column  widths.  The  default  "C"
                 locale  corresponds to the 7-bit ASCII character
                 set; only characters from ISO 8859-1 are  valid.
                 The  information  corresponding to this category
                 is  stored  in  a  database   created   by   the
                 localedef()  command.  This environment variable
                 is used by ctype(3C), mblen(3C), and  many  com-
                 mands, such as cat(1), ed(1), ls(1), and vi(1).
8

I think that it's easier to explain with a demo...

$ echo hello|wc -c
6

$ echo hello|od -hc
0000000 6865 6c6c 6f0a
h e l l o \n
0000006

$ printf hello|wc -c
5

$ printf hello|od -hc
0000000 6865 6c6c 6f00
h e l l o
0000005

9

didnt know echo put a NEWLINE char at the end.

but also when i put hello in a text file useing vi i also get 6 char.
that octal dump program looks interesting. will deffinetly check out that man page.

10

Okay, that's understandable, Ygor. From the man page for echo:

From the man page for wc:

So basically, the newline character is there and wc has no way of suppressing it itself, so it must be suppressed with printf, echo -n, or something similar...

Thanks Ygor!