Find length of a string that includes its own length?

I want to get the length of a string including a part of the string that represents its own length without padding or using structs or anything like that that forces fixed lengths.

So for example I want to be able to take this string as input:

"A string|"

And return this:

"A string|11"

Asked by: Marcus356 | Posted: 30-11-2021

Answer 1

On the basis of the OP tolerating such an approach (and to provide an implementation technique for the eventual python answer), here's a solution in Java.

 final String s = "A String|";
 int n = s.length(); // `length()` returns the length of the string.
 String t; // the result
 do {
      t = s + n; // append the stringified n to the original string
      if (n == t.length()){
          return t; // string length no longer changing; we're good.
      }                       
      n = t.length(); // n must hold the total length
 } while (true); // round again

The problem of, course, is that in appending n, the string length changes. But luckily, the length only ever increases or stays the same. So it will converge very quickly: due to the logarithmic nature of the length of n. In this particular case, the attempted values of n are 9, 10, and 11. And that's a pernicious case.

Answered by: Max835 | Posted: 01-01-2022

Answer 2

A simple solution is :

def addlength(string):
    n1=len(string)
    n2=len(str(n1))+n1
    n2 += len(str(n2))-len(str(n1)) # a carry can arise
    return string+str(n2)

Since a possible carry will increase the length by at most one unit.

Examples :

In [2]: addlength('a'*8)
Out[2]: 'aaaaaaaa9'

In [3]: addlength('a'*9)
Out[3]: 'aaaaaaaaa11'

In [4]: addlength('a'*99)
Out[4]: 'aaaaa...aaa102'

In [5]: addlength('a'*999)
Out[5]: 'aaaa...aaa1003'

Answered by: Hailey379 | Posted: 01-01-2022

Answer 3

Here is a simple python port of Bathsheba's answer :

def str_len(s):
    n = len(s)
    t = ''
    while True:
        t = s + str(n)
        if n == len(t):
            return t
        n = len(t)

This is a much more clever and simple way than anything I was thinking of trying!

Suppose you had s = 'abcdefgh|, On the first pass through, t = 'abcdefgh|9 Since n != len(t) ( which is now 10 ) it goes through again : t = 'abcdefgh|' + str(n) and str(n)='10' so you have abcdefgh|10 which is still not quite right! Now n=len(t) which is finally n=11 you get it right then. Pretty clever solution!

Answered by: Caroline639 | Posted: 01-01-2022

Answer 4

It is a tricky one, but I think I've figured it out.

Done in a hurry in Python 2.7, please fully test - this should handle strings up to 998 characters:

import sys

orig = sys.argv[1]

origLen = len(orig)

if (origLen >= 98):
    extra = str(origLen + 3)
elif (origLen >= 8):
    extra = str(origLen + 2)
else:
    extra = str(origLen + 1)

final = orig + extra

print final

Results of very brief testing

C:\Users\PH\Desktop>python test.py "tiny|"

tiny|6

C:\Users\PH\Desktop>python test.py "myString|"

myString|11

C:\Users\PH\Desktop>python test.py "myStringWith98Characters.........................................................................|"

myStringWith98Characters.........................................................................|101

Answered by: Leonardo393 | Posted: 01-01-2022

Answer 5

Just find the length of the string. Then iterate through each value of the number of digits the length of the resulting string can possibly have. While iterating, check if the sum of the number of digits to be appended and the initial string length is equal to the length of the resulting string.

def get_length(s):
    s = s + "|"
    result = ""
    len_s = len(s)
    i = 1
    while True:
        candidate = len_s + i
        if len(str(candidate)) == i:
            result = s + str(len_s + i)
            break
        i += 1

Answered by: Marcus916 | Posted: 01-01-2022

Answer 6

This code gives the result.

I used a few var, but at the end it shows the output you want:

def len_s(s):
    s = s + '|'
    b = len(s)
    z = s + str(b)
    length = len(z)
    new_s = s + str(length)
    new_len = len(new_s)
    return s + str(new_len)

s = "A string"
print len_s(s)

Answered by: Fenton859 | Posted: 01-01-2022

Answer 7

Here's a direct equation for this (so it's not necessary to construct the string). If s is the string, then the length of the string including the length of the appended length will be:

L1 = len(s) + 1 + int(log10(len(s) + 1 + int(log10(len(s)))))

The idea here is that a direct calculation is only problematic when the appended length will push the length past a power of ten; that is, at 9, 98, 99, 997, 998, 999, 9996, etc. To work this through, 1 + int(log10(len(s))) is the number of digits in the length of s. If we add that to len(s), then 9->10, 98->100, 99->101, etc, but still 8->9, 97->99, etc, so we can push past the power of ten exactly as needed. That is, adding this produces a number with the correct number of digits after the addition. Then do the log again to find the length of that number and that's the answer.

To test this:

from math import log10

def find_length(s):
    L1 = len(s) + 1 + int(log10(len(s) + 1 + int(log10(len(s)))))
    return L1

# test, just looking at lengths around 10**n
for i in range(9):
    for j in range(30):
        L = abs(10**i - j + 10) + 1
        s = "a"*L
        x0 = find_length(s)
        new0 = s+`x0`
        if len(new0)!=x0:
            print "error", len(s), x0, log10(len(s)), log10(x0)

Answered by: Roman762 | Posted: 01-01-2022

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