In emacs, how do I find the length of an identifier (or of the kill ring)?

Question

PL/SQL is restricted to a 30-character identifier length. I'd like to find the size of the identifier under my cursor without counting manually. (Underscores are breaking the identifier by word, so a solution by word may not work. I'm using emacs 24.3.1.)

Answer 1

I figured it out. Move the cursor to the beginning of the identifier. Then use C-M-@ to select the whole identifier (a "balanced expression") and M-= to show the statistics of the region. (On my Windows machine, C-M-2 works in lieu of C-M-shift-2.)

Answer 2

You found the answer (M-=) in 10 minutes -- good. Another thing that can help (no need to hit M-=):

Library modeline-posn.el shows the size of the active region in the mode line. See Mode-Line Position.