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Use Python’s built-in len() function to get the length of a string: len(text). For a Python str, that counts Unicode code points—not always the number of characters a person perceives on screen. If you need UTF-8 bytes instead, encode the string first.
Count a Python string’s length with len()
For ordinary string length, pass the string to len():
text = "Python"
print(len(text)) # 6The official Python tutorial describes len() as the built-in function that returns a string’s length. Python strings are immutable sequences of Unicode code points, and Python does not have a separate character type; indexing a string produces another string of length one.
What does len() count?
len(text) counts code points. That can differ from the number of symbols a reader sees as individual characters: a letter with a combining accent may consist of a base letter and a separate accent code point, and some emoji are sequences of multiple code points.
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If a specification says “character count,” check which unit it requires:
- Code points: use
len(text), the usual Python string length. - User-perceived characters: count grapheme clusters using Unicode-aware segmentation.
- Encoded bytes: encode the string in the required format, then measure the resulting bytes.
Python 3.15.0rc3 documentation describes unicodedata.iter_graphemes() for iterating extended grapheme clusters under Unicode Standard Annex #29. Because that documentation is for a release candidate, check that the API exists in your target Python interpreter before relying on it.
Count UTF-8 bytes instead
For a byte limit or protocol requirement, measure the encoded representation rather than the string’s code-point length:
text = "café"
byte_length = len(text.encode("utf-8"))
print(byte_length)str.encode() returns a bytes object. The Python codecs documentation explains the distinction between strings and encoded byte representations. A UTF-8 byte count can differ from len(text), particularly for non-ASCII text.
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