Need groff equivalent to C's strlen()

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#7015

From: Jhon Honce
Date: Wed, 20 May 1992 17:29

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I'm writing a set of special macros to handle a small data dictionary.
One of the fields is the number of characters in a keyword.  I thought
it would be nice to make the computer count this instead of the person
filling in the form.

This has turned out to be much more painful than I thought and I would
like some new ideas.  Assuming someone has some to give away.  ;-)

Using the \w function I can get a number that is the numerical width of
the string in basic units, eg.

	.nr keywrdlen (+\\w'\\$1')

I'm now at a cliff, do I try and sum the basic units in each character
to determine how many characters?  Or, is there some function I've
missed?  Or, do I just make the user expend a gray cell or two?

Thanks for any help you can spare.

Thanks to FSF for Groff!

-- 

/jwh
jhon honce -- honce@spso.gsfc.nasa.gov

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From: honce@spso.gsfc.nasa.gov (Jhon Honce)
Newsgroups: comp.text,gnu.groff.bug
Subject: Need groff equivalent to C's strlen()
Summary: how to determine number of characters in a macro argument
Keywords: troff
Message-ID: <honce.706382992@spso>
Date: 20 May 92 17:29:52 GMT
Reply-To: honce@spso.gsfc.nasa.gov (Jhon Honce)
Followup-To: comp.text,gnu.groff.bug
Organization: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
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