Maybe iterating through each character till I hit the 0 end of string marker would do.
This is a good general technique, but remember that in this case you are not passing a string with a terminating 0, but a buffer with unknown contents. The size you want is the physical size of the buffer, not the length of its contents. There really is no way of calculating this value at either compile or run time. If you want the size, you will have to either pass it in to getText or make some assumptions about it.
Mikal