nchar {stringx}

Get Length or Width of Strings

Description

nchar computes the number of code points, bytes used, or estimated total width of strings in a character vector. nzchar indicates which strings are empty.

Usage

nchar(x, type = "chars", allowNA = FALSE, keepNA = TRUE)

nzchar(x, keepNA = TRUE)

Arguments

x

character vector or an object coercible to

type

"chars" gives the number of code points, "width" estimates the string width, "bytes" computes the number of bytes

allowNA

not used (with a warning if attempting to do so) [DEPRECATED]

keepNA

if FALSE, missing values will be treated as "NA" strings; otherwise, the corresponding outputs will be missing as well [DEPRECATED]

Details

String width might be useful when displaying text using a monospaced font.

Value

nchar returns an integer vector.

nzchar returns a logical vector, where TRUE indicates that the corresponding string is of non-zero length (i.e., non-empty).

Differences from Base R

Replacement for base nchar and nzchar implemented with stri_length, stri_width, stri_numbytes, and stri_isempty.

• keepNA does not default to TRUE, and hence missing values are treated as "NA" strings [fixed here]

• some emojis, combining characters and modifiers (e.g., skin tones) are not recognised properly [fixed here]

• only the names attribute is propagated [fixed here]

Author(s)

Marek Gagolewski

See Also

The official online manual of stringx at https://stringx.gagolewski.com/

Related function(s): sprintf, substr, strtrim

Examples

x <- c(
    "\U0001F4A9",
    "\U0001F64D\U0001F3FC\U0000200D\U00002642\U0000FE0F",
    "\U0001F64D\U0001F3FB\U0000200D\U00002642",
    "\U000026F9\U0001F3FF\U0000200D\U00002640\U0000FE0F",
    "\U0001F3F4\U000E0067\U000E0062\U000E0073\U000E0063\U000E0074\U000E007F"
)
print(x)
base::nchar(x, "width")
stringx::nchar(x, "width")