pythonstringstring-length

How to get the size (length) of a string in Python


For example, I get a string:

str = "please answer my question"

I want to write it to a file.

But I need to know the size of the string before writing the string to the file. What function can I use to calculate the size of the string?


Solution

  • If you are talking about the length of the string, you can use len():

    >>> s = 'please answer my question'
    >>> len(s)  # number of characters in s
    25
    

    If you need the size of the string in bytes, you need sys.getsizeof():

    >>> import sys
    >>> sys.getsizeof(s)
    58
    

    Also, don't call your string variable str. It shadows the built-in str() function.