counting chars in buffer

counting chars in buffer

[Emanuel Berg]

How would one do that?

Using 'wc -c' on the file isn't allowed as I've
heard some systems (?) don't come with that.

Here are two suggestions:

    (require 'cl-lib)

    (defun count-chars ()
      (interactive)
      (save-excursion
        (let ((start (point-min))
              (end   (point-max))
              (chars 0) )
          (goto-char start)
          (while (< (point) end)
            (forward-char)
            (cl-incf chars) )
          chars) ))
    ;; (count-chars)

    (defun count-chars-2 ()
      (interactive)
      (length (buffer-string) ))
    ;; (count-chars-2)

One could also do a DWIM function which acts on
the region if there, otherwise the whole buffer...

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: counting chars in buffer

[Yuri Khan]

On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 1:53 AM, Emanuel Berg <moasen@zoho.com> wrote:
> How would one do that?

Interactively, M-= (count-words-region) displays region or buffer size
in characters as part of its output.

Programmatically, (buffer-size) is documented to return a character
count (as opposed to an octet count). Also, any positions are
specified in characters so you can just subtract them.

Re: counting chars in buffer

[Emanuel Berg]

Yuri Khan wrote:

> Programmatically, (buffer-size)

Yes, I found the "count-" set, so it is just
a matter of wrapping `buffer-size'
interactively into "count-chars"!

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underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573