Re: Count only visible characters?

[Joke de Buhr <joke@seiken.de>]

Since you are using prompt expansion you should always escape the color codes 
with "%{...%}". That's the only way zsh can calculate the length of the prompt 
line correctly. Otherwise the cursor will not be positioned at the end of the 
visual end.

testing="%{%F{green}%}hello"


If you need to do manual counting you can use this 

${(S%%)#testing//\%\{*\%\}}

The command replaces every escape %{...%} sequence prior to calculating the 
length.


$ testing="%{%F{green}%}hello"
$ echo ${(S%%)#testing//\%\{*\%\}}
5


On Friday, 9. April 2010 00:38:05 Seth House wrote:
> Is there any way to count only visible characters?
> 
>     testing="%F{green}hello"
>     echo ${(%)#testing}
> 
> The number I'm interested in is 5 not 14.
> 
> After an awful lot of Googling, I'm under the impression this isn't a
>  trivial problem. If that is true, I would certainly enjoy a little
>  exposition if someone has time.
> 
> Thanks.
> - Seth
>