What is the easiest way to count the amount of letters in a string entered

Question

I am currently writing a program in the raspberry pi that will allow a user to enter a string, and have the program count the amount of letters in it. I am looking into expr but I don't know how to use it, and what this actually does. Could you let me know what this means and how I can use it for my program.

This is what I currently have.

#!/bin/bash
echo "Enter a word."
read str
"help here please!"

Thanks

Maybe you should ask the teacher if you're struggling with the homework! — Swifty124, Oct 16 '14 at 08:24
You don't need to use expr since this will fork another process thus occupy more resources. It is as simple as echo "${#str}" — Valentin Bajrami, Oct 16 '14 at 08:24
Do you want to count characters or bytes? Some languages have multibyte characters. — Mark Plotnick, Oct 16 '14 at 10:22
I would like to count the characters in the string entered by the user. — Joe Dale, Oct 16 '14 at 11:55
Related: Having a problem with a shell script counting characters, Number of characters in a shell command's output, and Trying to find a better way to count letters in a file or shell variable. — G-Man Says 'Reinstate Monica', Oct 16 '14 at 18:00

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 16 '14 at 08:21

1

You could use this

expr length $str

Hopefully this should help!

answered Oct 16 '14 at 08:21

Jas

346

This, I have found, is a very longwinded answer compared to what val0x00ff has suggested. I much prefer to use what he has said as it makes things a lot easier. Thanks – Joe Dale Oct 16 '14 at 08:34
OK maybe next time, you decide whether you want to use 'expr' or not. Make it a bit clearer – Jas Oct 16 '14 at 08:36

What is the easiest way to count the amount of letters in a string entered

1 Answers1