In fact, you're not even going to see

    my $sizeofstring = length($string);
[download]

That's because "length" has been deemed to be an insufficiently specified concept, because it doesn't specify the units. Instead, if you want the length of something in characters you use

    my $sizeinchars = chars($string);
[download]

and if you want the size in elements, you use

    my $sizeinelems = elems(@array);
[download]

This is more orthogonal in some ways, insofar as you can now ask for the size in chars of an array, and it will add up all the lengths of the strings in it for you:

    my $sizeinchars = chars(@array);
[download]

And if you ask for the number of elems of a scalar, it knows to dereference it:

    my $ref = [1,2,3];
    my $sizeinelems = elems($ref);
[download]

These are, in fact, just generic object methods:

    @array.elems
    $string.chars
    @array.chars
    $ref.elems
[download]

And the functional forms are just method calls in disguise.

So maybe length() is a bad example now. Sorry. :-)

By the way, you can also use %hash.elems, which returns the number of pairs in the hash. I don't think %hash.chars is terribly useful, but it will tell you how many characters total there are in both keys and values.

Actually, the meaning of .chars varies depending on your current level of Unicode support. To be more specific, there's also:

    $string.bytes
    $string.codepoints
    $string.graphemes
    $string.letters
[download]

...none of which should be confused with:

    $string.columns
[download]

or its evil twin:

    $string.pixels
[download]

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