The function LENGTH returns either the number of items in the given list or the number of characters in a given string.
This function takes a single piece of input: either a single List, or a single string. It returns a Number. If a List was given as input, it returns the number of root-level items in the List. If a string was given as input, it returns the number of characters in the string.
Declaration
LENGTH(list_of_values) -> length
LENGTH(string) -> length
Parameters
list_of_values (type: List)
Any list.
string (type: string)
Any string.
Return Values
length (type: Number)
If a List was given as input, this is the number of root-value items in the list. If a string was given as input, this is the number of characters in the string.
Examples
The following example takes the string "This string!" and returns the number of characters within it. Note that punctuation and spaces both count as characters:
LENGTH("This string!") -> 12
The above example takes a string as input and returns the number of characters that made it up. The following example takes a List and returns the number of root-level items within it. Note that the List given as input includes the string "This string!" from the above example, and yet the LENGTH function returns a number much smaller than the number returned in the above example; the length of the items within a List makes no difference to the number of items in said List:
LENGTH(["This string!", "Another string.", "A third string"]) -> 3
Discussion
The LENGTH function counts items in Lists in the same way it would Lists of anything else. This includes Lists of Lists. The following example gives a List of two Lists to the LENGTH function, which outputs 2 – the number of root items in the given List, not the number of items within the Lists within a List:
LENGTH([[1, 2], [3, 4, 5]]) -> 2
In order to count the number of items within the Lists within a List, the LENGTH function must be used in tandem with the FLAT function, such as in the following example:
LENGTH(FLAT([[1, 2], [3, 4, 5]])) -> 5