shell - Counting the Number of Characters in a File Using Bash and Assigning to Variable -

i need loop through text file provided , count number of characters in file. file contain 1 word supposed analyze. basically, need know length of word. want assign length variable have defined in bash file. here's have(ignore other if statement @ end, know working properly. need while loop):

#!/bin/bash file=$1 count=0 numchars=0 while ifs= read -rn1 char;   if [[ "$char" == $'[a-za-z0-9#$+%@]' ]];     let numchars=numchars+1   fi done < "$file" if [ -r "${file}" ];   if /bin/egrep -q [09] $file ;     let count=count+5   fi fi echo $count echo $numchars 

the file contain 1 word

in case can do:

# read whole file in variable w="$(<"$file")"  # length echo "length is: ${#w}" 

option 2: using wc

len=$(( $(wc -c < "$file") - 1 ))