Textlen

A fast and simple Command Line Interface (CLI) tool to calculate the character length, byte count, or word count of a string. Built with Python, Typer, and managed with Poetry.

Features

• Character Counting: Get the character length of a string (default).
• Byte Counting: Count the UTF-8 bytes of a string (useful for multi-byte characters/emojis).
• Word Counting: Count the number of whitespace-separated words in a string.
• Whitespace Trimming: Trim leading and trailing whitespace before calculation.
• Multiple Output Modes: Run one or multiple calculations simultaneously (using length, bytes, words, or all).

Installation

Ensure you have Python 3.9+ installed.

Using Poetry

1. Clone this repository:

   git clone https://github.com/rudvfaden/textlen.git
   cd textlen

2. Install the dependencies:

   poetry install

Usage

If you have installed the package in editable mode or activated the virtual environment, you can run the CLI directly:

textlen "your string"

Note: If the virtual environment is not activated, you can prepend poetry run:

poetry run textlen "your string"

Options

Option	Short Flag	Description
--trim	-t	Trim leading and trailing whitespace.
--mode	-m	Metric(s) to calculate (length, bytes, words, all). Can be specified multiple times. Defaults to length.
--help		Show the help message and exit.

Examples

1. Basic Character Count

textlen "Camila"

Output:

String: Camila
Length: 6

2. Trim Whitespace

textlen "   hello world   " --trim

Output:

String: hello world
Length: 11

3. Count Bytes (UTF-8 support)

textlen "café" --mode bytes

Output:

String: café
Bytes: 5

4. Count Words

textlen "hello world from textlen" --mode words

Output:

String: hello world from textlen
Words: 4

5. Multiple Modes Simultaneously

textlen "test" --mode bytes --mode words

Output:

String: test
Bytes: 4
Words: 1

6. Calculate All Metrics

textlen "test" --mode all

Output:

String: test
Length: 4
Bytes: 4
Words: 1

Development

Running Tests

We use pytest for unit testing. You can run all tests with:

poetry run pytest

Project Structure

• textlen/main.py: Main entry point and CLI command logic.
• tests/test_main.py: Test suites checking various options and validation rules.