Returns a Long containing the number of characters in a string or the number of bytes required to store a variable.
Syntax
Len(string | varname)
The Len function syntax has these parts:
| Part | Description |
|---|---|
| string | Any valid string expression. If string contains Null, Null is returned. |
| Varname | Any valid variable name. If varname contains Null, Null is returned. If varname is a Variant, Len treats it the same as a String and always returns the number of characters it contains. |
Remarks
One (and only one) of the two possible arguments must be specified. With user-defined types, Len returns the size as it will be written to the file.
Note Use the LenB function with byte data contained in a string, as in double-byte character set (DBCS) languages. Instead of returning the number of characters in a string, LenB returns the number of bytes used to represent that string. With user-defined types, LenB returns the in-memory size, including any padding between elements. For sample code that uses LenB, see the second example in the example topic.
Note Len may not be able to determine the actual number of storage bytes required when used with variable-length strings in user-defined data types.