string length operator

# string length operator

As stated in the Lua 5.5 programming manual (see The Length Operator), the returned length of a string is its number of bytes. This behaviour is respected in Lua^rt to preserve compatibility with standard Lua with ASCII characters.

To get the length in characters for UTF8 strings, do not use the # operator, use string.ulen() instead.

Example


-- declare an UTF8 string
local summer_in_french = "�t�"

-- outputs 5 (in bytes)
print( #summer_in_french )

-- outputs 3 (in characters) 
print( summer_in_french:ulen() )