Table of Contents
1. Overview
In PowerShell scripting, a common requirement is to get the length of a string, which refers to the number of characters it contains. This operation is crucial in various scenarios, such as validating input, parsing data, or controlling flow in scripts.
In this article, we will see different ways to get length of String using .length property, Measure-Object Cmdlet and StringInfo.LengthInTextElements. We will also see efficient way to get length of string if it contains special characters.
2. Introduction to Problem Statement
Given a string "Java2blog", the expected output is the number of characters in this string, which is 9.
Our goal is to explore different methods to achieve this in PowerShell, comparing their performance and discussing their applicability in different scenarios.
3. Using the .Length Property
The most straightforward way to get the length of a string in PowerShell is by using the .Length property.
e.g. "Hello World".Length.
System.String‘s Length property returns number of Characters present in the String.
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$blog_name = "Java2blog" # get length of String using length property $blog_name.Length |
Output
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9 |
This method is highly efficient and direct. Since .Length is a built-in property of string objects in .NET, which PowerShell is based on, it provides fast access to the string’s length.
We can also directly use Length property even without creating variable.
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"Java2blog".Length |
Output
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9 |
We can use Length property with if statement to do comparison based on length of String.
For example:
Let’s say we want to check if length of String is greater than 8 or not.
We can use following code:
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$blog_name = "Java2blog" # Check if blog_name is greater than 8 Characters if ($blog_name.length -gt 8) { Write-Output "Length of String <code>"Java2blog</code>" is more than 8 Characters" } |
Output
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Length of String "Java2blog" is more than 8 Characters |
We used -gt operator to check if String is greater than 8 or not.
Further reading:
4. Using the Measure-Object Cmdlet
Another method is to use the Measure-Object cmdlet, which is more versatile and can be used to measure various object properties.
Measure-Object cmdlet provides the numeric properties of objects, and the characters, words, and lines in string objects, such as files of text.
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$blog_name = "Java2blog" # get length of String using Measure-Object property $blog_name|Measure-Object -Character |
Output
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Lines Words Characters Property ----- ----- ---------- -------- 9 |
Here, we declared a string variable blogName which contains string "Java2blog" and piped it with Measure-Object.
We passed -Character as parameter to Measure-Object cmdlet to get total number of characters present in String.
Measure-Object is generally less efficient than using .Length due to the overhead of piping and cmdlet processing. It’s more useful in scenarios where we need to measure multiple objects or properties simultaneously.
We can also pass -word as parameter in case we want to count total number of words in String.
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$str = "Hello from Java2blog" # get length of String using Measure-Object property $str|Measure-Object -Word -Character |
Output
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Lines Words Characters Property ----- ----- ---------- -------- 3 20 |
5. Using StringInfo.LengthInTextElements
For strings containing Unicode or special characters, System.Globalization.StringInfo.LengthInTextElements provides an accurate length measurement.
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$string = "Java2blog" # Can include Unicode or special characters $stringLength = [System.Globalization.StringInfo]::new($string).LengthInTextElements $stringLength |
Output
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9 |
This method is slightly less efficient than .Length but provides accurate results for strings with complex characters. It’s the preferred choice when dealing with internationalization or special characters.
6. Conclusion
In PowerShell, there are multiple ways to determine the length of a string.
The .Length property is the most efficient and straightforward method for most scenarios. The Measure-Object cmdlet offers additional versatility at the cost of some performance. For strings with Unicode or special characters, StringInfo.LengthInTextElements provides an accurate count.
