title: Number of characters in an NSString
body: <p>I need a way to find the number of characters in an <code>NSString</code>. The nature of my app requires many multi char unicode characters, which presents obvious problems for the <code>length</code> method on <code>NSString</code>. </p>
  
  <p>Copied from Apple's developer website:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Length  
  Returns the number of Unicode characters in the receiver. 
  - (NSUInteger)length  
  Return Value The number of Unicode characters in the receiver.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I do not want the number of characters per se, but rather the number of characters that you would see if the string were printed out. Some characters I use in the app are numbers and letters with overlines, i.e. 0̄  . In unicode, this is represented with two separate unicode characters, however, when printed, is a single entity. When finding the length of the string, I need characters such as 0̄ to only count as one, not two as it would with the <code>NSString length</code> method. Is there a way of doing this? Thanks.</p>