This looks neat. However since I read about Koka's dot selection [0], I keep thinking that this is an even neater syntax:

fun showit( s : string )

  s.encode(3).count.println

However, this is of course impossible to implement in most languages as the dot is already meaningful for something else.

[0] https://koka-lang.github.io/koka/doc/book.html#sec-dot