Lots if interesting methods and ideas within your example @tw-FRed thanks for sharing.
- I am still working through how it works

- I like your approach to dealing with the different lengths, but wonder if there are even more ways?
- I am impressed with the reduction to two filters.
You may be interested in the stringlength operator I created (you can ignore the controversy in that thread) Idea: Enhance the length operator - #32 by TW_Tones
I wonder if a filter operator to return the longest/shortest string would be practical?
I think any other ideas for enhancing string operations, should be identified and collated.