If I understand correctly what you want to do (calculate character count for the first character in name) you could do it with something like this:
- Get length of the name ->
Length(:name)
- Remove first character from the name ->
Substitute(:name, Left(:name, 1), "")
- Get length of the string where first character is removed ->
Length(previous part)
- And finally calculate difference between these two strings
Length(:name) - Length(Substitute(:name, Left(:name, 1), ""))
-Jarmo