You can use curve-to-curve flow to do this, and it is not necessary to find the length of the curve.
You just draw a line with an angled line directly above it:
Select the angled line for the object to deform:
Then run Transform > Deform > Flow. Select the line that is shadowed under it as the base curve, and the curvy line as the target curve, and enable the "Stretch" option:
With the "stretch" option enabled the base line does not need to be the exact length of the curvy one, in that mode it maps the entire length of the base curve to the entire length of the target curve so that handles working with the entire length.
You can also do a customized "rise and fall" by drawing in some curved profile instead of just a diagonal rising line, like this:
- Michael
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