How to get the size of a string in Python?

Question

For example, I get a string:

str = \"please answer my question\"

I want to write it to a file.

But I need to know the size of the s

Answer 1

The most Pythonic way is to use the len(). Keep in mind that the '\' character in escape sequences is not counted and can be dangerous if not used correctly.

>>> len('foo')
3
>>> len('\foo')
3
>>> len('\xoo')
  File "", line 1
SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 0-1: truncated \xXX escape