title: Python 3 len() function for Unicode characters
body: <p>When we believe Python 3 got everything right on Unicode I am surprised while I faced this situation. </p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; amma = "அம்மா"
  &gt;&gt;&gt; amma
  'அம்மா'
  &gt;&gt;&gt; len(amma)
  5
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Apparently the Tamil string <code>"அம்மா"</code> has 3 letters, A return value of 5 for <code>len("அம்மா")</code> in no way can be accepted or appreciated. </p>
  
  <p>How are the other Dravidian or Brahmic scripts solve this issue to get the right string length?</p>
  
  <p>Edit #1:
  Considering the comment of @joey this question can be rephrased as below.</p>
  
  <p><strong>How to calculate the grapheme length in Python?</strong></p>
  
  <p>We know Swift or Perl6 does this by default</p>
  
  <pre><code>  2&gt; let amma = "அம்மா".characters.count
  amma: Distance = 3
  </code></pre>