The function type is integer.
The returned value is the number of UTF-8 characters in argument-1.
If the UTF-8 argument contains composed characters (for example, ä, ê, and ü), the combining characters are counted individually in determining the length. See the following example where the returned value may vary for a composed character:
Character | Unicode encoding | UTF-8 encoding | Returned value |
---|---|---|---|
ä |
U+00E4 (precomposed form, latin small letter a with diaeresis) |
x'C3A4' | 1 |
U+0061 + U+0308 (canonical decomposition, latin small letter a + combining diaeresis) |
x'61CC88' | 2 |