Compute the length/width

str_length() returns the number of codepoints in a string. These are the individual elements (which are often, but not always letters) that can be extracted with str_sub().

str_width() returns how much space the string will occupy when printed in a fixed width font (i.e. when printed in the console).

Usage

str_length(string)

str_width(string)

Arguments

string

Input vector. Either a character vector, or something coercible to one.

Value

A numeric vector the same length as string.

See also

stringi::stri_length() which this function wraps.

Examples

str_length(letters)
#>  [1] 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
str_length(NA)
#> [1] NA
str_length(factor("abc"))
#> [1] 3
str_length(c("i", "like", "programming", NA))
#> [1]  1  4 11 NA

# Some characters, like emoji and Chinese characters (hanzi), are square
# which means they take up the width of two Latin characters
x <- c("\u6c49\u5b57", "\U0001f60a")
str_view(x)
#> [1] │ 汉字
#> [2] │ 😊
str_width(x)
#> [1] 4 2
str_length(x)
#> [1] 2 1

# There are two ways of representing a u with an umlaut
u <- c("\u00fc", "u\u0308")
# They have the same width
str_width(u)
#> [1] 1 1
# But a different length
str_length(u)
#> [1] 1 2
# Because the second element is made up of a u + an accent
str_sub(u, 1, 1)
#> [1] "ü" "u"