China DOS Union

Question for the experts, is there any tool or command that can determine the length of a variable?
For example, set a=chenhui and determine that the length of a is 7

The strings command should work.

4DOS has such a function, use 4DOS.

You can use Strings.
strings length %a%

How do I pass it to a variable?

The following is quoted from chenhui530's post at 2005-2-27 10:19:30:

How do I pass it to a variable?

Strings can also pass the output result to a variable. For example: string b=length %a%. Then the result is stored in %b%.
But under Win2000 it seems variables can't be passed in; not sure whether it's a compatibility issue.

That's exactly what puzzles me, it doesn't work under XP for me either.

strings does not support setting variables in the NT environment, because under NT the mechanism for creating environment variables is different from 9x and pure DOS, so programs that can work normally under DOS cannot work normally under NT. But it can be worked around completely; of course you need to use lmod@echo off
set a=1234567
strings length %a% | lmod /L1 set L= > temp.bat
call temp.bat
del temp.bat
echo Length is %L%.

See, using Microsoft's own command interpreter is such a hassle, you even have to call an external command from disk. In 4DOS, one line solves the problem. Although today's machines are not comparable to the old ones in speed, you still need to have an optimization mindset.