How do I get the "visible" length of a combining Unicode string in Python?

Question

If I have a Python Unicode string that contains combining characters, len reports a value that does not correspond to the number of characters "seen".

For example, if I have a string with combining overlines and underlines such as u'A\u0332\u0305BC', len(u'A\u0332\u0305BC') reports 5; but the displayed string is only 3 characters long.

How do I get the "visible" — that is, number of distinct positions occupied by the string the user sees — length of a Unicode string containing combining glyphs in Python?

Answer 1

The unicodedata module has a function combining that can be used to determine if a single character is a combining character. If it returns 0 you can count the character as non-combining.

import unicodedata
len(u''.join(ch for ch in u'A\u0332\u0305BC' if unicodedata.combining(ch) == 0))

or, slightly simpler:

sum(1 for ch in u'A\u0332\u0305BC' if unicodedata.combining(ch) == 0)

Answer 2

If you have a regex flavor that supports matching grapheme, you can use \X

Demo

While the default Python re module does not support \X, Matthew Barnett's regex module does:

>>> len(regex.findall(r'\X', u'A\u0332\u0305BC'))
3

On Python 2, you need to use u in the pattern:

>>> regex.findall(u'\\X', u'A\u0332\u0305BC')
[u'A\u0332\u0305', u'B', u'C']
>>> len(regex.findall(u'\\X', u'A\u0332\u0305BC'))
3

Answer 3

Combining characters are not the only zero-width characters:

>>> sum(1 for ch in u'\u200c' if unicodedata.combining(ch) == 0)
1

("\u200c" or "‌" is zero-width non-joiner; it's a non-printing character.)

In this case the regex module does not work either:

>>> len(regex.findall(r'\X', u'\u200c'))
1

I found wcwidth that handles the above case correctly:

>>> from wcwidth import wcswidth
>>> wcswidth(u'A\u0332\u0305BC')
3
>>> wcswidth(u'\u200c')
0

But still doesn't seem to work with user 596219's example:

>>> wcswidth('각')
4