Perl string length() function - Quick Tutorial

$RESULT = length(EXPRESSION);

Perl's length() function simply returns the length of a perl string in characters.

$myString = 'perl.about.com';
$myLength = length($myString);

In this example, we've created a string with the value perl.about.com. When we run the length function on the string, it will return 14, or the total number of characters in the string. Note that this does not count the size of the string in bytes - just the length in characters.