Get the length of a String

Question

How do you get the length of a String  For example  I have a variable defined like   var test1  String    Scott    However  I can t seem to find a length method on the string

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In Swift 4 2 and Xcode 10 1  In Swift strings can be treated like an array of individual characters  So each character in string is like an element in array  To get the length of a string use yourStringName count property   In Swift  yourStringName characters count property in deprecated  So directly use strLength count property   let strLength    This is my string  print strLength count    print strLength characters count    Error   characters  is deprecated  Please use String or Substring directly   If Objective C   NSString  myString     Hello World   NSLog    lu    myString length       11

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If you are just trying to see if a string is empty or not  checking for length of 0   Swift offers a simple boolean test method on String  myString isEmpty   The other side of this coin was people asking in ObjectiveC how to ask if a string was empty where the answer was to check for a length of 0   NSString is empty

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In Xcode 6 1 1   extension String           var length   Int   return self utf16Count        I think that brainiacs will change this on every minor version

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For Xcode 7 3 and Swift 2 2   let str         If you want the number of visual characters   str characters count  If you want the  16-bit code units within the string   s UTF-16 representation    str utf16 count      Most of the time  1 is what you need   When would you need 2  I ve found a use case for 2   let regex   try  NSRegularExpression pattern          options  NSRegularExpressionOptions UseUnixLineSeparators  let str      let result   regex stringByReplacingMatchesInString str       options  NSMatchingOptions WithTransparentBounds       range  NSMakeRange 0  str utf16 count   withTemplate   dog   print result     dogdogdogdogdogdog   If you use 1  the result is incorrect   let result   regex stringByReplacingMatchesInString str       options  NSMatchingOptions WithTransparentBounds       range  NSMakeRange 0  str characters count   withTemplate   dog   print result     dogdogdog

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Swift 4 update comparing with swift 3  Swift 4 removes the need for a characters array on String  This means that you can directly call count on a string without getting characters array first    hello  count                     5   Whereas in swift 3  you will have to get characters array and then count element in that array  Note that this following method is still available in swift 4 0 as you can still call characters to access characters array of the given string   hello  characters count          5   Swift 4 0 also adopts Unicode 9 and it can now interprets grapheme clusters  For example  counting on an emoji will give you 1 while in swift 3 0  you may get counts greater than 1      count    Swift 4 0 prints 1  Swift 3 0 prints 2         count    Swift 4 0 prints 1  Swift 3 0 prints 4

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Right now  in Swift 2 3  if you use   myString characters count    the method will return a  Distance  type  if you need the method to return an Integer you should type cast like so   var count   myString characters count as Int

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In Swift 4    If the string does not contain unicode characters then use the following   let str   String    abcd  let count   str count    output 4   If the string contains unicode chars then use the following    let spain    Espa  a  let count1   spain count    output 6 let count2   spain utf8 count    output 7

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Here s something shorter  and more natural than using a global function   aString utf16count   I don t know if it s available in beta 1  though  But it s definitely there in beta 2

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Swift 1 2 Update  There s no longer a countElements for counting the size of collections  Just use the count function as a replacement  count  Swift     Swift 2 0  3 0 and 3 1       let strLength   string characters count      Swift 4 2  4 0 onwards    Apple Documentation - Strings      let strLength   string count

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Swift 5 0 strings can be treated as an array of individual characters  So  to return the length of a string you can use  yourString count  to count the number of items in the  characters  array

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test1 endIndex gives the same result as test1 characters count on Swift 3

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As of Swift 4   It s just   test1 count   for reasons    Thanks to Martin R   As of Swift 2   With Swift 2  Apple has changed global functions to protocol extensions  extensions that match any type conforming to a protocol  Thus the new syntax is   test1 characters count    Thanks to JohnDifool for the heads up   As of Swift 1  Use the count characters method   let unusualMenagerie    Koala  amp  128040   Snail  amp  128012   Penguin  amp  128039   Dromedary  amp  128042   println  unusualMenagerie has   count unusualMenagerie   characters      prints  unusualMenagerie has 40 characters    right from the Apple Swift Guide   note  for versions of Swift earlier than 1 2  this would be countElements unusualMenagerie  instead   for your variable  it would be  length   count test1     was countElements in earlier versions of Swift   Or you can use test1 utf16count

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You can get the length simply by writing an extension   extension String          MARK  Use if it s Swift 2     func stringLength str  String  - gt  Int           return str characters count               MARK  Use if it s Swift 3     func stringLength   str  String  - gt  Int           return str characters count               MARK  Use if it s Swift 4     func stringLength   str  String  - gt  Int           return str count

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You could use SwiftString  https   github com amayne SwiftString  to do this     string  length    6  DISCLAIMER  I wrote this extension

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in Swift 2 x the following is how to find the length of a string  let findLength    This is a string of text  findLength characters count   returns 24

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As of Swift 1 2 utf16Count has been removed  You should now use the global count   function and pass the UTF16 view of the string  Example below     let string    Some string  count string utf16

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Updated for Xcode 6 beta 4  change method utf16count --  utf16Count   var test1  String    Scott   var length    test1 utf16Count   Or   var test1  String    Scott   var length   test1 lengthOfBytesUsingEncoding NSUTF16StringEncoding

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In swift4 I have always used string count till today I have found that   string endIndex encodedOffset   is the better substitution because it is faster - for 50 000 characters string is about 6 time faster than  count  The  count depends on the string length but  endIndex encodedOffset doesn t    But there is one NO  It is not good for strings with emojis  it will give wrong result  so only  count is correct

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my two cents for swift 3 4  If You need to conditionally compile       if swift  gt  4 0              let len   text count          else             let len   text characters count          endif

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Best way to count String in Swift is this   var str    Hello World  var length   count str utf16

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Swift 1 1  extension String       var length  Int   return countElements self               Swift 1 2  extension String       var length  Int   return count self                       Swift 2 0  extension String       var length  Int   return characters count                 Swift 4 2  extension String       var length  Int   return self count                    let str    Hello  let count   str length       returns 5  Int

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tl dr If you want the length of a String type in terms of the number of human-readable characters  use countElements    If you want to know the length in terms of the number of extended grapheme clusters  use endIndex  Read on for details   The String type is implemented as an ordered collection  i e   sequence  of Unicode characters  and it conforms to the CollectionType protocol  which conforms to the  CollectionType protocol  which is the input type expected by countElements    Therefore  countElements   can be called  passing a String type  and it will return the count of characters   However  in conforming to CollectionType  which in turn conforms to  CollectionType  String also implements the startIndex and endIndex computed properties  which actually represent the position of the index before the first character cluster  and position of the index after the last character cluster  respectively  So  in the string  ABC   the position of the index before A is 0 and after C is 3  Therefore  endIndex   3  which is also the length of the string   So  endIndex can be used to get the length of any String type  then  right   Well  not always   Unicode characters are actually extended grapheme clusters  which are sequences of one or more Unicode scalars combined to create a single human-readable character   let circledStar  Character     u 2606  u 20DD           circledStar is a single character made up of U 2606  a white star   and U 20DD  a combining enclosing circle   Let s create a String from circledStar and compare the results of countElements   and endIndex   let circledStarString      circledStar   countElements circledStarString     1 circledStarString endIndex    2

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In Swift 4 1 and Xcode 9 4 1  To get length in Objective c and Swift is different  In Obj-c we use length property  but in Swift we use count property  Example      In Swift let stringLenght    This is my String  print stringLenght count     In Objective c NSString   stringLenght     This is my String   NSLog    lu   stringLenght length

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In Swift 2 0 count doesn t work anymore  You can use this instead   var testString    Scott  var length   testString characters count

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Swift 4   string  count      Swift 3  extension String       var length  Int           return self characters count           usage   string  length

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Here is what I ended up doing  let replacementTextAsDecimal   Double string   if string characters count  gt  0  amp  amp      replacementTextAsDecimal    nil  amp  amp      replacementTextHasDecimalSeparator    nil           return false

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TLDR   For Swift 2 0 and 3 0  use test1 characters count  But  there are a few things you should know  So  read on   Counting characters in Swift  Before Swift 2 0  count was a global function  As of Swift 2 0  it can be called as a member function   test1 characters count   It will return the actual number of Unicode characters in a String  so it s the most correct alternative in the sense that  if you d print the string and count characters by hand  you d get the same result   However  because of the way Strings are implemented in Swift  characters don t always take up the same amount of memory  so be aware that this behaves quite differently than the usual character count methods in other languages    For example  you can also use test1 utf16 count  But  as noted below  the returned value is not guaranteed to be the same as that of calling count on characters   From the language reference      Extended grapheme clusters can be composed of one or more Unicode   scalars  This means that different characters   and different   representations of the same character   can require different amounts of   memory to store  Because of this  characters in Swift do not each take   up the same amount of memory within a string   s representation  As a   result  the number of characters in a string cannot be calculated   without iterating through the string to determine its extended   grapheme cluster boundaries  If you are working with particularly long   string values  be aware that the characters property must iterate over   the Unicode scalars in the entire string in order to determine the   characters for that string       The count of the characters returned by the characters property is not   always the same as the length property of an NSString that contains   the same characters  The length of an NSString is based on the number   of 16-bit code units within the string   s UTF-16 representation and not   the number of Unicode extended grapheme clusters within the string    An example that perfectly illustrates the situation described above is that of checking the length of a string containing a single emoji character  as pointed out by n00neimp0rtant in the comments   var emoji      emoji characters count               returns 1 emoji utf16 count                    returns 2

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Get string value from your textview or textfield   let textlengthstring    yourtextview  text   as String   Find the count of the characters in the string   let numberOfChars   textlength characters count

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String and NSString are toll free bridge so you can use all methods available to NSString with swift String  let x    test  as NSString let y   NSString    string 2  let lenx   x count let leny   y count

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If you are looking for a cleaner way to get length of a string checkout this library which has bunch of extensions to the Swift built in classes http   www dollarswift org  length  Using this library you can just do  Some Str  length

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Apple made it different from other major language  The current way is to call   test1 characters count  However  to be careful  when you say length you mean the count of characters not the count of bytes  because those two can be different when you use non-ascii characters   For example            hi  characters count will give you 5 but this is not the count of the bytes        To get the real count of bytes  you need to do     hi  lengthOfBytes using  String Encoding utf8   This will give you 11

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You could try like this    var test1  String    Scott  var length    test1 bridgeToObjectiveC   length

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Universal Swift 4 and 3 solution         Since swift 4 There is also native count  But it doesn t return Int    NOTE  was  var count Int   return self characters count      EXAMPLE   abc  count  Output  4     extension String      var count Int           return self distance from  self startIndex  to  self endIndex

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Swift 5 1  5  let flag       print flag count     Prints  1  --  Counts the characters and emoji as length 1  print flag unicodeScalars count     Prints  2  --  Counts the unicode lenght ex   A  is 65  print flag utf16 count     Prints  4   print flag utf8 count     Prints  8

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Swift 2 0  Get a count  yourString text characters count  Fun example of how this is useful would be to show a character countdown from some number  150 for example  in a UITextView   func textViewDidChange textView  UITextView        yourStringLabel text   String 150 - yourStringTextView text characters count

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Using Xcode 6 4  Swift 1 2 and iOS 8 4           Playground - noun  a place where people can play      import UIKit      var str      He u 2606         count str     7      let length   count str stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet NSCharacterSet whitespaceAndNewlineCharacterSet     as Int    3     println length    3     true

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var str    Hello  playground  var newString   str as NSString      countElements str    This counts the characters in Regular Swift String  countElements  newString as String         This counts the characters in a NSString

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You can add this function to your extention  extension NSString        func charLength   - gt  Int           return count self as String

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test1 characters count   will get you the number of letters numbers etc in your string   ex   test1    StackOverflow   print test1 characters count     prints  13

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You can use str utf8 count and str utf16 count which  I think  are the best solution

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Swift 4  let str     Your name   str count    Remember  Space is also counted in the number

[swift] Get the length of a String

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