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string x = "​​​h​​​el​​​lo​​​";

There are 5 visible characters in this line, but because of the U+200B that stands between the characters, the number of characters

Console.WriteLine(x.Count());

equals 17.

How do I get the number of visible characters in a string?

Rand Random
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MaKeSter
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    Looking for this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3253247 ? – Rand Random May 31 '23 at 10:37
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    This isn't a simple problem. For example, take the zero-width joiner, U+200D. The sequence `U+1F469 U+200D U+1F692` renders as ‍, a woman firefighter (1 visible character). But move the ZWJ to the end, `U+1F469 U+1F692 U+200D`, and it renders as ‍, a woman next to a fire engine (2 visible characters). This example uses emoji, but the same thing happens with real characters. Other non-printable characters have similar effects, and will change how things are rendered. Even the concept of a "character" becomes woolly when you start talking about non-latin scripts – canton7 May 31 '23 at 10:39
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    The [`StringInfo`](https://learn.microsoft.com/dotnet/api/system.globalization.stringinfo) class might help you here. – Martin Costello May 31 '23 at 10:39
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    Define visible better. If you define most sort of whitespace as visible because they at least use a visible "space" there is not a build in definition in unicode as far as i know. You presumably need to collect the codepoints yourself an make your own list and remove those from the string before counting. Interestingly there is a page for everything https://invisible-characters.com/ – Ralf May 31 '23 at 10:40
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    If you define a "visible character" as an [extended grapheme cluster](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39869673/what-is-a-graphemecluster-and-what-does-expressiblebyextendedgraphemeclusterlite), then you can use `new StringInfo(...).LengthInTextElements`. However, that still thinks that your string with zero-width spaces in has length 17. You'll note that as you try and move a cursor through the string, or use the arrow keys to select part of it, it stops at the zero-width spaces as if they were real spaces – canton7 May 31 '23 at 10:42
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    A [soft hyphen](https://invisible-characters.com/00AD-SOFT-HYPHEN.html) can be visible or invisible. The renderer decides, not the input string. – Ruud Helderman May 31 '23 at 10:59
  • If you can accept an ad-hoc solution that excludes _only_ this codepoint U+200B, then it can be as simple as `x.Count(c => c != '\u200B')`. It still does not account for other "invisible" characters, does not account for several codepoints being shown as a single "rune" because of "combining characters", does not account for single codepoints needing _two_ UTF-16 code units (surrogate pairs) because they are outside plane 0, and so on. Another possibility is `x.Count(c => char.GetUnicodeCategory(c) != UnicodeCategory.Format)` which suffers for most of the same shortcomings. – Jeppe Stig Nielsen May 31 '23 at 11:13
  • @JeppeStigNielsen A Rune (in the C# sense) is a codepoint. They're the same thing. – canton7 May 31 '23 at 11:48
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    @canton7, Ah, I see you are absolutely right, I messed up the terminology. I should have said something like several codepoints being shown as a single "grapheme cluster", or "text element". – Jeppe Stig Nielsen May 31 '23 at 23:28

1 Answers1

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If characters of Your String including Letter, number, spaces,Punctuation . you can use this code

string x = "hel​​​lo 123 ddf ddd​​​";

Console.WriteLine(Countstring(x));
//Result :17

string xx = "hel​​​lo";
Console.WriteLine(Countstring(xx));

//Result :5

int Countstring(string s)
{
    int count = 0;
    foreach (var item in s)
        if (Char.IsLetter(item)
            || Char.IsDigit(item)
            || Char.IsPunctuation(item)
            || Char.IsSymbol(item)
            || Char.IsWhiteSpace(item))
            count++;
    return count;
}
abolfazl sadeghi
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