1. You don't iterate over bytes in an integer, so you don't need to know the size of an int since all uses are handled by the compiler. If you do care, you can

1. You don't iterate over bytes in an integer, so you don't need to know the size of an int since all uses are handled by the compiler. If you do care, you can always find out with a sizeof check (or preferably specify the size directly). The compiler can't handle Unicode for you since it's typically dynamic data. 2. This is reasonable. 3. What about fixed-width fonts like a terminal screen. In this case, I care about how many distinct (non-combined) code points exist, and a count of code points is often a acceptable approximation. That being said, when talking about string length, I mostly care when iterating and allocating memory, and those are two different usages of the term "length". I like how Go handles it: len(string) gives number of Unicode code points, len([]byte(string)) gives number of bytes. Everything else is a special case IMO that shouldn't use length, except perhaps as a conservative estimate (e.g. fixed width rendering).