That seems deranged to me. Like a true length calculation, It still requires a complex (albeit cachable) calculation to resolve, but it fails to return the leng

That seems deranged to me. Like a true length calculation, It still requires a complex (albeit cachable) calculation to resolve, but it fails to return the length of the string in terms of the number of characters as they would be natually presented. I understand a need in some contexts to distinguish between a character and its subsequent modifiers - but I do not see such a context here. Design by committee?