Is there a way to limit number of characters in an edittext field in scripting?

I want to limit the number of characters for edittext . Is there any way to do it?

I'm using onChanging() function to achieve this.

edittext.onChanging = function(){
 edittext.text = edittext.text.substr(0,1);
}

But I want to know is there any easier way to do this? In addition can you please explain what's the use of

edittext.characters