IF substitutions have no way of counting the characters of a field value. You'll need to use CB Query Field to query for the field, count its characters, and output that as a SELECT query. The query field would then display the character count of that field instead of its value and you can then use that in your IF statement.
And how to I subtract from a field value. Can I tell it to null characters in a field value or not display them?
Same method as above, you'll need query field to do it.