Dart:
Finding the length of a string

How to:

Dart makes it straightforward to get the length of a string using the length property. Here’s a basic example:

void main() {
  String myString = "Hello, Dart!";
  print("The length of '\(myString)' is: \(myString.length)");
  // Output: The length of 'Hello, Dart!' is: 12
}

This property counts the number of UTF-16 code units in the string, which corresponds to the string’s length for most common use cases.

For more nuanced text processing, especially involving Unicode characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP), consider using the characters package for counting grapheme clusters, which more accurately represents user-perceived characters.

First, add characters to your pubspec.yaml:

dependencies:
  characters: ^1.2.0

Then, use it like so:

import 'package:characters/characters.dart';

void main() {
  String myEmojiString = "👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 family";
  print("The length of '\(myEmojiString)' is: \(myEmojiString.characters.length)");
  // Output: The length of '👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 family' is: 8
}

In this example, myEmojiString.characters.length gives us the length in terms of Unicode grapheme clusters, which is a more accurate representation for strings containing complex characters, like emojis or combined character marks.