Python Program to Find the Length of a String Without Library Function

1. Introduction

In Python, while we typically use the len() function to find the length of a string, there are scenarios where we may need to calculate it manually. This can be due to constraints in a programming challenge or for educational purposes to understand the underlying process.

The length of a string is the count of characters in it. For example, the length of the string "Python" is 6. When we talk about finding the length of a string without using a library function, we refer to manually iterating through the string and counting the characters.

2. Program Steps

1. Initialize a string variable.

2. Initialize a count variable to zero.

3. Loop through the string until there are no more characters.

4. Increment the count for each character encountered.

5. After the loop ends, the count variable holds the length of the string.

6. Print the length of the string.

3. Code Program

# String to find the length of
string_to_measure = "Hello, World!"

# Initialize a count variable
length = 0

# Loop through the string and count each character
for char in string_to_measure:
    length += 1

# Print the length of the string
print(f"The length of the string is: {length}")

Output:

The length of the string is: 13

Explanation:

1. string_to_measure is initialized with "Hello, World!".

2. length is set to 0 and will serve as the counter.

3. A for loop iterates through each character char in string_to_measure.

4. For each iteration, length is incremented by 1.

5. Once the loop has finished, length contains the total number of characters in string_to_measure.

6. The print statement outputs the length, which, for "Hello, World!", is 13.