Methods of counting characters on various systems

Question 1

Counting characters of a program manually is tedious, and we do this a lot in Code Golf. How do you do a more effective character count using utilities provided by your shell or ide?

Question 2

(I know the answer, but wanted to try such a question to see if we consider this on-topic.)

Question 3

Additionally should we include the counts of special compiler/interpreter flags in the character counts?

Question 4

@JPvdMerwe That's a good question, but ask that on meta where we're fleshing out the description and usage of this site.

Question 5

@Close voters: Since we're defining this site, can you please give reasons as to why you think should be off-topic. This post was experimental in that regard, but no feedback makes it a pointless exercise.

Question 6

It's either meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com or superuser.com, because there is no puzzle.

Question 7

@Nakilon The area51 proposal had at least one meta-ish on-topic question: "Is code golfing the practice of elegance or obfuscation?" I disagree that this is for SU, as we've seen in answers there are specific details around newlines (and probably unicode too).

Question 8

@Nakilon See meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/27/…

Question 9

@marcog, if you asked this (about counting lines) question at proposal stage, I think, we could see mostly off-topic votes.

Question 10

@Nakilon Unfortunately I missed the definition stage, which is why I'm asking it now.

Question 11

@Nakilon: The question is whether meta is "meta-puzzle/golf" or "meta-this-site" or both. I saw it more as "meta-this-site" so far and "meta-golf" questions would then be on scope. Just my opinion, though.

Question 12

@Joey Same opinion I voiced here.

Question 13

On Linux, use wc -c file in your favourite shell. Note that you might be counting a trailing new-line, which you might want to ignore.

Question 14

Any unix, not just linux. And you can ignore the -c if you're going to parse the output by Mk. I eyeball.

Question 15

‐c counts bytes. This stems from the sometimes erroneous historical view that bytes and characters are the same size. (source: POSIXTM) This question, however, is asking for character count. The flag for that is ‐m: wc ‐m file... is the way to go.

Question 16

Notepad++ includes a convenient count of both characters (not including newlines) and bytes (be sure to first remove any trailing newlines and switch to Unix newlines) at the bottom of the window. Separate counts exist for the current selection and the entire file.

Question 17

That's probably what I'll use for most of my solutions. If I ever do one, that is.

Question 18

I use this tool: http://www.javascriptkit.com/script/script2/charcount.shtml.

Question 19

Usually I use one of these two ways:

I always have my Total Commander (FAR, MC, what do you wish) opened at current working directory, so I just look on file size in bytes and substract (number_of_lines - 1) if I used CR LF;
If I'm too lazy to open Total, I go to IRC and give solution code to bot to count it's length.

Question 20

Shift+F2, U, Enter in Far to save it with LF line endings. :-)

Question 21

I just look at the character count when I open it in vim to copy across.

Question 22

Vim appends one unnecessary new line at the end of file.

Question 23

@Alexandru: :set binary noeol

Question 24

For most golfings I just use Far, i.e. an orthodox file manager, save the file with LF line endings and just look at the file size (I need to remember svn ps svn:eolstyle LF * though because SVN tends to think too much). Since I'm on Windows there's luckily no trailing LF to be accounted for.

However, for one-liners in PowerShell, I have a small utility (slightly buggy, but never got around fixing them):

function Set-GolfPrompt {
 function global:prompt {
 # Info about how much shorter/longer the previous command was can only
 # be given if the history is long enough, so don't do that if not.
 $history = Get-History
 if ($history.Length -ge 2) {
 $last = (Get-History)[-1].CommandLine.Length
 2ドルndlast = (Get-History)[-2].CommandLine.Length
 Write-Host -NoNewline -ForegroundColor DarkGray "Last command's length: $last "
 if (2ドルndlast -eq $last) {
 Write-Host -NoNewline -ForegroundColor Gray "(?0)"
 } elseif (2ドルndlast -lt $last) {
 Write-Host -NoNewline -ForegroundColor Red "(+$($last - 2ドルndlast))"
 } else {
 Write-Host -NoNewline -ForegroundColor Green "(-$(2ドルndlast - $last))"
 }
 }
 [Console]::Write("`n ")
 0..10 |
 ForEach-Object {
 [Console]::ForegroundColor = ($_+1) % 2 * 2 + 12
 [Console]::Write("$_ ")
 }
 [Console]::Write("`n ")
 1..11 |
 ForEach-Object {
 [Console]::ForegroundColor = $_ % 2 * 2 + 12
 [Console]::Write('1234567890')
 }
 [Console]::ForegroundColor = 'White'
 [Console]::WriteLine()
 "> "
 }

Which then looks like this:

enter image description here

Question 25

I like to paste the code into charactercountonline.com . I especially enjoy that I don't need to include the whole file in the count, because I often include useless information that doesn't need to be counted (e.g. in Java: package codegolf;).

Question 26

I usually use Sublime for counting (even if I'm not writing the code in it). I paste the code I want to count into a new file. Then, if I'm sure that my code still works without any whitespace whatsoever, I prepare it with

Ctrl +H (open Find & Replace)
(optionally) Alt + R (activate regex search)
\ s (search for whitespace)
(optionally) Tab Del (clear replacement string)
Ctrl + Alt + Enter (replace all)
Ctrl + A (select all)

Now in the status bar at the bottom you'll see "x characters selected". This sequence of key presses becomes really mechanical after a while, and when you're doing it repeatedly, because you've been golfing more in the meantime, you can actually skip steps 2 to 4. Of course, some of those combinations may be configured differently on your machine, but I think they are the default key bindings in Windows.

This is particularly useful for Mathematica answers, because if you paste stuff out of Mathematica, you get tons of unwanted whitespace.

Question 27

And how do you count bytes for Mma programs?

Question 28

@belisarius If I've got Unicode (in any language), after the above steps, I'll paste it into this online byte counter. Of course, in Mathematica in particular, you sometimes need to insert the Unicode characters by hand, because when copying out of Mathematica, it will replace stuff like ⋂ with \[Intersection].

Question 29

Yeah, thanks a lot. That char replacement is what sometimes drives me nuts. BTW, I count chars with Sublime too :)

Question 30

$ python
>>> len("".join(open('filename').readlines()))

or, as hallvabo suggests:

$ python
>>> len(open('filename').read())

Question 31

This would count the number of lines, not characters.

Question 32

@hallvabo, Good point. I've fixed it.

Question 33

Why not just open('filename').read()? And to avoid any behind-the-scenes automagial line terminator translation, use 'rb' as mode flag.

Question 34

@hallvabo, I didn't know you could do that.

Question 35

Usually I am using vim, so for one liners I position the cursor on the last character and read off that position

For multiple lines, I save the file and subtract 1 from the reported size (because of the extra newline)

If I solve a problem in one line in the python interpreter, I'll just paste it into

>>> len("""<solution>""")

(I don't think I've ever had an answer with """ in it :))

Question 36

on vim: g <Ctrl>-g

moinudin 13k17 silver badges20 bronze badges · Answer 1 · 2011-01-27 22:20:38Z

4

\$\begingroup\$

On Linux, use wc -c file in your favourite shell. Note that you might be counting a trailing new-line, which you might want to ignore.

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answered Jan 27, 2011 at 22:20

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moinudin

13k17 silver badges20 bronze badges

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4

\$\begingroup\$ Any unix, not just linux. And you can ignore the -c if you're going to parse the output by Mk. I eyeball. \$\endgroup\$

dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten
– dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten

2011年01月27日 22:33:37 +00:00
Commented Jan 27, 2011 at 22:33
\$\begingroup\$ ‐c counts bytes. This stems from the sometimes erroneous historical view that bytes and characters are the same size. (source: POSIXTM) This question, however, is asking for character count. The flag for that is ‐m: wc ‐m file... is the way to go. \$\endgroup\$

Kai Burghardt
– Kai Burghardt

2023年09月05日 10:17:46 +00:00
Commented Sep 5, 2023 at 10:17

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PleaseStand 5,60714 silver badges6 bronze badges · Answer 2 · 2011-01-31 12:13:33Z

Notepad++ includes a convenient count of both characters (not including newlines) and bytes (be sure to first remove any trailing newlines and switch to Unix newlines) at the bottom of the window. Separate counts exist for the current selection and the entire file.

That's probably what I'll use for most of my solutions. If I ever do one, that is.

Chris Laplante 7823 silver badges2 bronze badges · Answer 3 · 2011-01-27 22:40:07Z

1

\$\begingroup\$

I use this tool: http://www.javascriptkit.com/script/script2/charcount.shtml.

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answered Jan 27, 2011 at 22:40

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Chris Laplante

7823 silver badges2 bronze badges

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Nakilon 6433 silver badges7 bronze badges · Answer 4 · 2011-01-27 23:13:23Z

Usually I use one of these two ways:

I always have my Total Commander (FAR, MC, what do you wish) opened at current working directory, so I just look on file size in bytes and substract (number_of_lines - 1) if I used CR LF;
If I'm too lazy to open Total, I go to IRC and give solution code to bot to count it's length.

Shift+F2, U, Enter in Far to save it with LF line endings. :-)

Nemo157 2,14110 silver badges3 bronze badges · Answer 5 · 2011-01-28 05:25:57Z

1

\$\begingroup\$

I just look at the character count when I open it in vim to copy across.

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answered Jan 28, 2011 at 5:25

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Nemo157

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2

1

\$\begingroup\$ Vim appends one unnecessary new line at the end of file. \$\endgroup\$

Alexandru
– Alexandru

2011年01月28日 21:30:02 +00:00
Commented Jan 28, 2011 at 21:30
\$\begingroup\$ @Alexandru: :set binary noeol \$\endgroup\$

ninjalj
– ninjalj

2011年02月04日 22:14:14 +00:00
Commented Feb 4, 2011 at 22:14

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Joey 13.2k14 silver badges17 bronze badges · Answer 6 · 2011-01-31 12:37:39Z

For most golfings I just use Far, i.e. an orthodox file manager, save the file with LF line endings and just look at the file size (I need to remember svn ps svn:eolstyle LF * though because SVN tends to think too much). Since I'm on Windows there's luckily no trailing LF to be accounted for.

However, for one-liners in PowerShell, I have a small utility (slightly buggy, but never got around fixing them):

function Set-GolfPrompt {
 function global:prompt {
 # Info about how much shorter/longer the previous command was can only
 # be given if the history is long enough, so don't do that if not.
 $history = Get-History
 if ($history.Length -ge 2) {
 $last = (Get-History)[-1].CommandLine.Length
 2ドルndlast = (Get-History)[-2].CommandLine.Length
 Write-Host -NoNewline -ForegroundColor DarkGray "Last command's length: $last "
 if (2ドルndlast -eq $last) {
 Write-Host -NoNewline -ForegroundColor Gray "(?0)"
 } elseif (2ドルndlast -lt $last) {
 Write-Host -NoNewline -ForegroundColor Red "(+$($last - 2ドルndlast))"
 } else {
 Write-Host -NoNewline -ForegroundColor Green "(-$(2ドルndlast - $last))"
 }
 }
 [Console]::Write("`n ")
 0..10 |
 ForEach-Object {
 [Console]::ForegroundColor = ($_+1) % 2 * 2 + 12
 [Console]::Write("$_ ")
 }
 [Console]::Write("`n ")
 1..11 |
 ForEach-Object {
 [Console]::ForegroundColor = $_ % 2 * 2 + 12
 [Console]::Write('1234567890')
 }
 [Console]::ForegroundColor = 'White'
 [Console]::WriteLine()
 "> "
 }

Which then looks like this:

enter image description here

Justin 21.4k1 gold badge22 silver badges36 bronze badges · Answer 7 · 2014-06-17 21:03:54Z

I like to paste the code into charactercountonline.com . I especially enjoy that I don't need to include the whole file in the count, because I often include useless information that doesn't need to be counted (e.g. in Java: package codegolf;).

Martin Ender 198k14 gold badges181 silver badges311 bronze badges · Answer 8 · 2014-06-18 09:45:46Z

I usually use Sublime for counting (even if I'm not writing the code in it). I paste the code I want to count into a new file. Then, if I'm sure that my code still works without any whitespace whatsoever, I prepare it with

Ctrl +H (open Find & Replace)
(optionally) Alt + R (activate regex search)
\ s (search for whitespace)
(optionally) Tab Del (clear replacement string)
Ctrl + Alt + Enter (replace all)
Ctrl + A (select all)

Now in the status bar at the bottom you'll see "x characters selected". This sequence of key presses becomes really mechanical after a while, and when you're doing it repeatedly, because you've been golfing more in the meantime, you can actually skip steps 2 to 4. Of course, some of those combinations may be configured differently on your machine, but I think they are the default key bindings in Windows.

This is particularly useful for Mathematica answers, because if you paste stuff out of Mathematica, you get tons of unwanted whitespace.

@belisarius If I've got Unicode (in any language), after the above steps, I'll paste it into this online byte counter. Of course, in Mathematica in particular, you sometimes need to insert the Unicode characters by hand, because when copying out of Mathematica, it will replace stuff like ⋂ with \[Intersection].
Yeah, thanks a lot. That char replacement is what sometimes drives me nuts. BTW, I count chars with Sublime too :)

Thomas O 3,40814 silver badges3 bronze badges · Answer 9 · 2011-01-31 09:55:06Z

0

\$\begingroup\$

$ python
>>> len("".join(open('filename').readlines()))

or, as hallvabo suggests:

$ python
>>> len(open('filename').read())

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edited Feb 1, 2011 at 12:46

answered Jan 31, 2011 at 9:55

Thomas O's user avatar

Thomas O

3,40814 silver badges3 bronze badges

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4

\$\begingroup\$ This would count the number of lines, not characters. \$\endgroup\$

hallvabo
– hallvabo

2011年01月31日 21:50:38 +00:00
Commented Jan 31, 2011 at 21:50
\$\begingroup\$ @hallvabo, Good point. I've fixed it. \$\endgroup\$

Thomas O
– Thomas O

2011年02月01日 10:15:40 +00:00
Commented Feb 1, 2011 at 10:15
\$\begingroup\$ Why not just open('filename').read()? And to avoid any behind-the-scenes automagial line terminator translation, use 'rb' as mode flag. \$\endgroup\$

hallvabo
– hallvabo

2011年02月01日 12:44:34 +00:00
Commented Feb 1, 2011 at 12:44
\$\begingroup\$ @hallvabo, I didn't know you could do that. \$\endgroup\$

Thomas O
– Thomas O

2011年02月01日 12:45:37 +00:00
Commented Feb 1, 2011 at 12:45

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gnibbler 15.3k17 silver badges16 bronze badges · Answer 10 · 2011-02-02 21:03:00Z

Usually I am using vim, so for one liners I position the cursor on the last character and read off that position

For multiple lines, I save the file and subtract 1 from the reported size (because of the extra newline)

If I solve a problem in one line in the python interpreter, I'll just paste it into

>>> len("""<solution>""")

(I don't think I've ever had an answer with """ in it :))

1

\$\begingroup\$ on vim: g <Ctrl>-g \$\endgroup\$

ninjalj
– ninjalj

2011年02月04日 22:15:14 +00:00
Commented Feb 4, 2011 at 22:15

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