How to determine length of a string [renamed]

Sorry about that, but its obvious that while scanning a forum, the eye will be drawn to threads that are titled in caps and Ill hopefully hit the jackpot:D …anyway, Im using variables pulled in from a .cfm, and have split them into an array using .split("|"), so I can dynamically populate a nav bar…so now Ive got an Array of all the menu button names stored in the file…SOOOoooo…Say Ive got a button called “Home”, and the other “The Dysfunctional Properties of the Human Mind”, obviously I need the duplicate buttons to scale in width. Is there a way of finding out the number of letters in a string that is part of my array?

To reposition my duplicate buttons I used this -
setProperty(“cats_clip”+i, _x, xstart+i*_root.cats_clip._width);

To change the width I want to use this
setProperty(“cats_clip”+i, _[color=black]width[/color], [color=black]widthstart[/color]+i[color=red][color=black][/color](([color=red]number of characters in current string[/color][/color][color=black]width of one letter)+a buffer to allow for space on the sides);[/color]
[color=#ff0000][/color]
[color=black]or something to that effect[/color]
[color=black]So could anyone tell me what to use to replace the bit in red?[/color]