String processing

This page documents the String type. String is clonable.

General concepts

A String is a sequence of characters enclosed between single or double quotes, such as 'hello' or "hello". Strings in Phonometrica are mutable, which means that some functions allow you to modify them directly.

All string functions assume that strings are encoded according to the UTF-8 Unicode standard. A good tutorial about UTF-8 can be found at the following address: http://www.zehnet.de/2005/02/12/unicode-utf-8-tutorial. In the remainder of this document, the term character is used to mean extended grapheme cluster in the sense of the Unicode specification. This generally corresponds to the notion of “user-perceived character”.

Constructor

class String
String()

Creates an empty string.

Functions

append(ref string as String, suffix as String)

Inserts suffix as the end of string.

See also: prepend()

char(pos as Integer)

Get character at position pos. If pos is negative, counting starts from the end.

contains(string as String, substring as String)

Returns true if string contains substring, and false otherwise.

count(string as String, substring as String)

Returns the number of times substring appears in string.

s = "cacococococa"
count = count(s, "coco")

print count # prints "2"

Note: matches don’t overlap.

ends_with(string as String, suffix as String)

Returns true if the string ends with suffix, and false otherwise.

See also: starts_with()

find(string as String, substring as String)

Returns the start position of substring in string, or 0 if it is not found. Searching proceeds from left to right.

See also: find_back()

find(string as String, substring as String, pos as Integer)

Returns the start position of substring in string, or 0 if it is not found. Searching proceeds from left to right, starting at pos.

See also: find_back()

find_back(string as String, substring as String)

Returns the start position of substring in string, or 0 if it is not found. Searching proceeds from right to left.

See also: find()

find_back(string as String, substring as String, pos as Integer)

Returns the start position of substring in string, or 0 if it is not found. Searching proceeds from right to left, starting at pos.

See also: find()

function:: insert(ref string as String, pos as Integer, other as String)

Inserts other at position pos.

function:: is_empty(string as String)

Returns true if the string is empty.

left(string as String, n as Integer)

Get the substring corresponding to the n first characters of the string.

len(string as String)

Returns the number of characters in the string.

ltrim(ref string as String)

Removes whitespace characters at the left end of the string.

s = "  hello  "
ltrim(s)
print "$", s, "$" # prints "$hello  $"

See also: trim(), rtrim()

prepend(ref string as String, suffix as String)

Inserts suffix as the beginning of string.

See also: append()

remove(ref string as String, sub as String)

Removes all (non-overlapping) instances of the substring sub.

See also: remove_at(), remove_first(), remove_last()

remove_at(ref string as String, at as Integer, count as Integer)

Removes count characters, starting at position at.

See also: remove(), remove_first(), remove_last()

remove_first(ref string as String, sub as String)

Removes the first instance of the substring sub.

See also: remove_at(), remove(), remove_last()

remove_last(ref string as String, sub as String)

Removes the last instance of the substring sub.

See also: remove_at(), remove(), remove_first()

replace(ref string as String, old as String, new as String)

Replaces all (non-overlapping) instances of the substring old by new.

See also: replace_at(), replace_first(), replace_last()

replace_at(ref string as String, at as Integer, count as Integer, new as String)

Replaces count characters starting at position at with substring new.

See also: replace(), replace_first(), replace_last()

replace_first(ref string as String, old as String, new as String)

Replaces the first instance of the substring old with new.

See also: replace_at(), replace(), replace_last()

replace_last(ref string as String, old as String, new as String)

Replaces the last instance of the substring old with new.

See also: replace_at(), replace(), replace_first()

reverse(ref string as String)

Reverse all characters in the string.

s = "noël"
reverse(s)
print s # prints "lëon"

Get the substring corresponding to the n last characters of the string.

rtrim(ref string as String)

Removes whitespace characters removed at the right end of the string.

s = "  hello  "
rtrim(s)
print "$", s, "$" # prints "$  hello$"

See also: ltrim(), trim()

slice(string as String, from as Integer)

Returns the substring starting at index from until the end of the string.

slice(string as String, from as Integer, to as Integer)

Returns the substring starting at index from and ending at index to (inclusive). If to equals -1, returns the substring from from until the end of the string.

s = "c'était ça"

print slice(s, 3, 7) # "était"
print slice(s, 3,-1) # "était ça"
split(string as String, delim as String)

Returns a List of strings which have been split at each occurrence of the substring delim.

starts_with(string as String, prefix as String)

Returns true if the string starts with prefix, and false otherwise.

See also: ends_with()

to_lower(string as String)

Returns a copy of the string where each character has been converted to lower case.

s1 = "C'ÉTAIT ÇA"
s2 = to_lower(s1)

print s2 # prints "c'était ça"

See also: to_upper()

to_upper(string as String)

Returns a copy of the string where each character has been converted to upper case.

s1 = "c'était ça"
s2 = to_upper(s1)

print s2 # prints "C'ÉTAIT ÇA"

See also: to_lower()

trim(ref string as String)

Removes whitespace characters removed at both ends of the string.

s = "\t  hello  \n"
trim(s)
print "$", s, "$" # prints "$hello$"

See also: ltrim(), rtrim()

Fields

first

Returns the first character in the string.

last

Returns the last character in the string.

length

Returns the number of characters in the string.

s = "안녕하세요"
print s.length # Prints "5"

See also: len()