length and character access

Learn the length property and accessing characters with brackets.

String length: length

Every string has a property called length that returns the number of characters in the string. For example "hello".length is 5.

An empty string "" has a length of 0. Digits, spaces and punctuation all count as one character each; JavaScript counts characters with UTF-16.

You access the property with a dot: const word = "pen"; console.log(word.length);. This prints three.

Character access: brackets

You reach a single character in a string with brackets like word[0]. Indexing starts at zero: the first character is 0, the second is 1, the last is length - 1.

For example "pen"[0] gives "p", "pen"[2] gives "n". An out of range index returns undefined; no error is thrown.

The same access works with the charAt(0) method; its only difference is that an out of range index returns an empty string.

Exercise Log length and characters

Declare word as the string "JavaScript". Log word.length, the first character word[0], and the last character word[word.length - 1] with console.log.

Show example solution

const word = "JavaScript";
console.log(word.length);
console.log(word[0]);
console.log(word[word.length - 1]);

Test yourself

What is "hello".length?
```
console.log("merhaba".length);
```
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
Show answer

5 — Correct. 'hello' has five letters; length returns 5.

Access the first character

const word = "kalem"; const first = word____;

Show answer

const word = "kalem"; const first = word[0];

Match each access to its meaning

word[0]

First character
word.length

Character count
word[word.length - 1]

Last character
word.charAt(0)

First character (method)
What is "pen".length - 1?
```
console.log("kalem".length - 1);
```
- 3
- 4
- 1
- 2
Show answer

2 — Correct. 'pen' has length 3; 3 - 1 = 2. This is the last character's index.

Next lesson: String concatenation

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