[texhax] texhax Digest, Vol 2006, Issue 163

[Reinhard Kotucha]

>>>>> "hgi" == hgi  <hgi at shaw.ca> writes:

  > I have a couple of other questions - one is about variables.  How
  > can I programatically determine the number of letters in a word?
  > I'm hoping for something like (I'm making this up)
  > $z=LetterCount{some words in here}.  I would like to make some
  > macros that could use this functionality.

\documentclass{minimal}
\newcounter{charcnt}
\makeatletter
\newcommand{\charcount}[1]{\setcounter{charcnt}{\z@}%
  \@tforloop#1\@nil\@@\@tempa{\addtocounter{charcnt}{\@ne}}}
\makeatother

\begin{document}
  \charcount{abc}\typeout{\thecharcnt}
  \charcount{1234567}\typeout{\thecharcnt}
  \charcount{12 34}\typeout{\thecharcnt}
\end{document}

To typeset the result, use \arabic{charcnt}.

Note that the macro counts tokens, not characters.  Since a control
sequence name is one token, \charcount{180\textdegree} will return 4.

The macro \@tforloop is defined in the LaTeX sources, file ltcntrl.dtx.

The macros \makeatletter and \makeatother temporarily allow @ in
command sequence names.  They have to be removed if you put the macro
definition into a .sty file.

\charcount doesn't work with \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}.  It returns
the number of bytes of multibyte characters.  But if you need Unicode
you can try Omega or Aleph instead of TeX.

Regards,
  Reinhard

-- 
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Reinhard Kotucha			              Phone: +49-511-4592165
Marschnerstr. 25
D-30167 Hannover	                      mailto:reinhard.kotucha at web.de
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