---
name: length
status: documented
runtime: pp
source: src/runtime/pp/strings/mod.rs
---
```{index} single: length; Perl built-in (pp runtime)
```

# length

## Synopsis

```perl
$len = length($string);
$len = length("café");   # 4 (characters, not bytes)
```

## Description

Returns the number of characters in a string.

Returns the character count (not byte count) for Unicode correctness.
`length(undef)` returns `undef`, matching perl5 behavior.

## See also

substr