It sounds like a generic length function in Unicode in 2023 is no longer a good idea. These articles complaining about the variety of lengths in Unicode are an

It sounds like a generic length function in Unicode in 2023 is no longer a good idea. These articles complaining about the variety of lengths in Unicode are annoying at this point. Pretty much all of them can be summed up as, "Well, it depends." And, that isn't wrong. But nerds love to argue until they are blue in the face about the One Correct Answer. Sheesh. This is the most interesting comparison article I have seen in years about Unicode processing in C++: https://thephd.dev/the-c-c++-rust-string-text-encoding-api-landscape https://thephd.dev/the-c-c++-rust-string-text-encoding-api-l... The author is also the lead on an open source C++ Unicode library called ztd.txt: https://github.com/soasis/text https://github.com/soasis/text