Bash increment length of string

Question

I just want to echo an incremented string length. For example:

STR="test"
echo ${#STR}

It prints 4, but I want to print 5.

Does this answer your question? [Incrementing a variable inside a Bash loop](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20681210/incrementing-a-variable-inside-a-bash-loop) — Lety, Nov 30 '20 at 16:44

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 30 '20 at 15:46

1

STR="test"
count=${#STR}
((count++))
echo $count

answered Nov 30 '20 at 15:46

0stone0

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 30 '20 at 16:51

The length of the string cannot be changed without modifying the string. If you want to add another character at the beginning, try

STR="a$STR"

Now ${#STR} is 5, because STR is atest (five characters).

If you want to perform arithmetic in the shell, use an arithmetic expression:

echo "$((1+${#STR}))"

2 Answers2