Python String Length – Find the length of a String in Python

In this article, you’ll learn about Python String Length, or more specifically, how to find out the length of a string in Python. There are a couple of ways to go about this. We cover the easiest way first and also show you some alternatives that you can use to find out the length of a string in Python. This also works with variables that hold string values.

Table of Contents

• Find out String Length with the len() Function
  • Basic Python len() Example
  • Using Python len() directly on a String
  • Example using Python len() with Whitespace
• Using a For Loop to Calculate String Length
• Summary

Find out String Length with the len() Function

The easiest way to achieve our goal is by utilizing the built-in len() function. To use the len() function, we simply need to wrap the string inside the parenthesis of the len() function.

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Basic Python len() Example

The best way to demonstrate this is by measuring the length of a string. In this case, we measure the length of the string "Hello!", which, including the "!", should amount to 6 characters of length:

our_string = "Hello!"
print(len(our_string))
Code language: PHP (php)

Output:

6
Code language: plaintext (plaintext)

The output comes back in form of an int with the number 6, which is the length of the our_string variable.

Using Python len() directly on a String

We can also use the len() function directly on a string without creating a variable first:

print(len("Hello!"))
Code language: PHP (php)

Output:

6
Code language: plaintext (plaintext)

Example using Python len() with Whitespace

When checking for String Length, each whitespace is considered a character as well. If we look at the following example:

string_with_whitespace = "Hello World!"
print(len(string_with_whitespace))
Code language: PHP (php)

Output:

12
Code language: plaintext (plaintext)

The result is 12. The actual characters in the phrase “Hello World!” are just 11, but since the whitespace is also counted as a character, the result is 12.

Using a For Loop to Calculate String Length

Another way of figuring out the length of a string in Python is by using a for loop. This for loop will iterate over each character and increase the value of the variable called counter each time the for loop encounters a string character:

counter = 0

for char in our_string:
  counter +=1

print(counter)
Code language: PHP (php)

Output:

6
Code language: plaintext (plaintext)

This gives us the same result as the len() function, which does the same without the need to write a for loop, keeping our code nice and clean.

Summary

This should give you a pretty good idea of how the Python len() function works and also what other ways you can use to figure out the length of a string in Python.

To summarize:

• The Python len() function can be used to figure out the length of a string.
• Whitespaces are counted as characters when using the len() function or a for loop.
• A for loop can be used alternatively to figure out the length of a string in Python.
• The return value of the len() function is always an integer (number).
• The len() function can also be used to get the length of lists, tuples, dictionaries, and other values.

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