Table of Contents

# $EPIC: numlines.txt,v 1.3 2006/08/01 05:36:58 sthalik Exp $

Synopsis:

$numlines(<columns> <string>)

Technical:

This function tells you the number of lines that the given string would occupy after final display in a window with a width of <columns>.

Practical:

This function can be used to determine how many lines a particular string will occupy in particular window. One thing this could be used for is scripting a file pager that will correctly pause between each screen of output, regardless of long lines and SET CONTINUED_LINE|INDENT.

Returns:

number of lines <string> will occupy if displayed in a window with a width of <columns>, or nothing on error.

Examples:

$numlines(6 foo bar baz)                  returns 2
$numlines($word(0 $geom()) foo bar baz)   probably returns 1
$numlines(foo bar baz)                    returns nothing

Notes:

This does NOT take into account SET OUTPUT_REWRITE so you may want to turn it off before outputting anything that may depend on $numlines() being accurate.