The string variable type can hold any sequence of characters. String values are represented by the sequence of characters in double quotes (“”).

string s = “This is a string”; disp(“This is a string passed to a function”);

Each character in the string has an index that is zero-based For example, the first character has an index of 0, the second an index of one and so on:

  String:  A   s t r i n g . . . !
           - - - - - - - - . . . 
  Index:   0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 . . .n-1

These indices are used to refer to the position within a string and are used in many string manipulation functions.

Strings can contain special characters that cannot be ordinarily represented as a character, such as tabs and new lines. These values are represented by a special escape character '\' followed by a letter describing what kind of character is represented. Note that even though the special character is input as two characters ('\' and the special character), it is internally stored as one character.

Special Character	Description	Syntax
Tab	A tab character	\t
New Line	Advances to the next line	\n
Carriage Return	Performs a carriage return	\r
\	Used when a ‘back slash’ is needed, and not an escape character	\\
"	A quote, for when a quote is in the string and does not signify the end of the string.	\"

For example, the following string:

"Hello,\nString\tUser, \"Have a good day\\night !!!\""

is displayed as:

Hello, String   User, "Have a good day\night !!!"

There are many specialized string functions and operators for manipulating strings. This includes searching strings, comparing strings, and modifying the contents of strings. The following table shows special operators used on strings:

Operator	Description	Syntax
+	Concatenates two strings.	s1 = s2 + s3
==	Equality comparison Returns: true if both strings are identical, false otherwise	s1 == s2
!=	Inequality comparison Returns: true if the strings are not identical, false otherwise	s1 != s2
>	Greater-than comparison Returns: true if the first string is longer in length, or if the ASCII number representation of the string is greater than that of the second string	s1 > s2
<	Less-than comparison Returns: true if the first string is shorter in length, or if the ASCII number representation of the string is less than that of the second string	s1 < s2
=	Assignment operator. Assigns the value of the first string to that of the second	s1 = s2

Note that the comparison operators can be combined for less than or equal (<=) or greater than or equal (>=).

1 >>string s1 = "Hi"; 2 >>string s2 = "Bye"; 3 >>disp(s1 == s2); false 4 >>disp(s1 == "Hi"); true 5 >>disp(s1 != s2); true 6 >>disp(s1 + s2); HiBye 7 >>disp(s1 < s2); false 8 >>disp(s1 > s2); true

The next table shows some string specific functions:

Function	Description
find	Finds the first occurrence of a string within another string.
substring	Extracts a portion of the input string and returns it.
trim	Removes leading and trailing white-space from a string.
getlength	Returns the length of the string.
format	Formats an int or real into a string (similar to sscanf in C).
replace	Replaces all occurrences in a string of one expression with another expression.
split	Splits a string into an array of strings based on a parsing token.
string	Converts any variable into its string representation.
strrev	Reverses the character order of a string