STRING-LENGTH(1)

🎀 STRING-LENGTH(1) 🎀

okay so bestie, welcome to string-length from the fish-shell manual — yes it's a real section-1 page and yes it's about to be your new fave. it's literally just "how long is this string" energy but make it ✨precise✨. sit down, grab a strawberry 🍓, and let's get into it.

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✨ NAME ✨

string-length — print string lengths. that's it. that's the whole vibe check. 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

string length [-q | --quiet] [-V | --visible] [STRING ...]

look at her. iconic. the brackets are doing main character energy.

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so string length reports the length of each string argument in characters. one number per string, no cap.

Exit status: 0 if at least one non-empty STRING was given, or 1 otherwise. so basically it tells you "yeah something's there" or "nope, empty bestie" 👑

here's the two flags, no notes:

• -q, --quiet — quiet mode, she's not announcing anything, just give me the status
• -V, --visible — measure the visible width instead of raw character count. this is the queen flag honestly 👑

and like. what does --visible actually do, you ask? glad you asked babe, because it's giving nuance:

• it discounts escape sequences fish knows about — so all that colour-code noise doesn't get counted ✨
• it accounts for $fish_emoji_width and $fish_ambiguous_width — yes those are real variables, yes they matter 🐟
• it counts each line on its own when they're separated by \n — separate lines, separate widths, periodt
• with a carriage return (\r) it counts only the widest stretch on a line — because that's what actually survives on screen
• the whole intent is to measure the number of columns the STRING would occupy in the current terminal 🖥️💖

bestie note: -q and -V are the two options. that's the list. don't go looking for more, there aren't more. 🫶

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🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

okay this is the fun part, let's go:

>_ string length 'hello, world'
12

twelve. slay. simple as that 💅

>_ set str foo
>_ string length -q $str; echo $status
0
# Equivalent to test -n "$str"

see that # Equivalent to test -n "$str"? that's the whole trick — -q plus $status is basically a test -n. iykyk 🧚

>_ string length --visible (set_color red)foobar
# the set_color is discounted, so this is the width of "foobar"
6

the set_color gets discounted (as the comment says, fr fr), so what's left is just the width of "foobar" → 6. the escape codes are NOT invited to the measurement party 🚫🎉

>_ string length --visible 🐟🐟🐟🐟
# depending on $fish_emoji_width, this is either 4 or 8
# in new terminals it should be
8

four fishies, but the width depends on $fish_emoji_width — either 4 or 8, and in new terminals it should be 8. emoji math is real and it's coming for us 😭🔥

>_ string length --visible abcdef\r123
# this displays as "123def", so the width is 6
6

the \r carriage return situation: it displays as "123def", so width is 6. the \r goes back to the start and overwrites — and only the widest stretch counts. literally erasing herself, main character behaviour 💀

>_ string length --visible a\nbc
# counts "a" and "bc" as separate lines, so it prints width for each
1
2

two lines, two numbers: 1 then 2. each line gets its own width, one per line, in order. no merging, no combining, we respect boundaries here 🫶

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👑 Copyright 👑

fish-shell developers

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and that's the page bestie!! 💖 you now know string length better than most people know their own passwords. go measure something. go be iconic. 🦋✨

🌸 sign-off szn: this was from fish-shell, version 4.9, dated Sep 08, 2026 — so go forth and <rainbow>slay</rainbow> responsibly, mwah 💋🎀