In UNIX, one deals with variables all the times. Many a time, you might want to find the length of a variable. The length of a variable can be found or calculated using many different ways in UNIX. Lets explore the different ways to do it:
#VAR="welcome" #echo ${#VAR} 7 #
2. The echo command with wc can also be used to find the length of a variable.
#VAR="welcome" #echo -n $VAR | wc -c 7 #
3. The printf command with wc can also be used to calculate the length of a variable.
#VAR="welcome" #printf $VAR | wc -c 7 #
4. The expr command can also be used to find the length of a variable.
#VAR="welcome' #expr $VAR : '.*' 7 #
5. The awk command can also be used to calculate the length of the variable.
#VAR="welcome" #echo $VAR | awk '{print length ;}' 7 #
6. The perl command can also be used for the same:
#VAR="welcome" #echo $VAR | perl -ne 'chop; print length($_) . "\n";' 7 #
All the above examples all common across all UNIX flavors such as Solaris, HP-UX, Linux, AIX, etc.
[Note: In the above examples, the setting of variable VAR is shown with respect to k-shell/bourne shell. Depending on your shell, the setting of VAR variable will change.]