String length (${#var}) in Bash Scripting - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Counting Characters in a Bash String

📖 Scenario: You are working on a simple bash script to help count the number of characters in a word. This is useful when you want to check the length of names, passwords, or any text input in your scripts.

🎯 Goal: Build a bash script that stores a word in a variable, then calculates and shows the number of characters in that word using the ${#var} syntax.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a variable called word with the exact value hello

Create a variable called length that stores the length of word using ${#word}

Print the value of length to show the number of characters in word

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Counting string length is useful in scripts that validate user input, like checking password length or formatting text.

💼 Career

Many automation and scripting jobs require handling text data and validating input lengths to ensure correct processing.

1

Create the word variable

Create a variable called word and set it to the exact string hello.

Bash Scripting

# Create a variable called word with the value hello
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use word="hello" to assign the string.

2

Calculate the length of the word

Create a variable called length that stores the length of the string in word using ${#word}.

Bash Scripting

word="hello"
# Create a variable called length that stores the length of word
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use length=${#word} to get the string length.

3

Print the length

Use echo to print the value of the variable length.

Bash Scripting

word="hello"
length=${#word}
# Print the length variable
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use echo "$length" to display the length.

4

Run the script to see the output

Run the script and confirm it prints the number 5, which is the length of the word hello.

Bash Scripting

word="hello"
length=${#word}
echo "$length"
# Run the script to see the output

Need a hint?

The output should be 5 because the word "hello" has 5 letters.