$ cat ./uu #!/usr/bin/perl use 5.010; use strict; use warnings; use Inline 'C'; my $s0 = "Hello, world"; my $s1 = "\x{5fcd}\x{65e0}\x{53ef}\x{5fcd}"; my $s2 = "($s1)"; my $l0 = w_length ($s0); my $l1 = w_length ($s1); my $l2 = w_length ($s2); say "$l0: $s0"; say "$l1: $s1"; say "$l2: $s2"; __END__ __C__ #include int w_length(char* str) { int i; int length; char c; i = 0; length = 0; while(c = str[i++]) { int l; l = wcwidth(c); length += l > 0 ? l : 0; } return length; } $ LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 perl -CO ./uu 12: Hello, world