String

Description

• Plain text string

• Needs to be in quotation marks " " or ' '

• Can include spaces

• For quotation marks/apostrophes inside, use a \" or \'

• Lots of uses

Examples:

Processing:

String greeting = "Hello!";

C#:

string lyric = 'I can\'t get enough';

JavaScript:

var thing = "big airplane";

Python:

thing = "moo cow"

Shortcut

Add easily to an existing string by using += .

Processing example:

String greeting = "Hello, ";
greeting += "Eric";
greeting += "!";

println(greeting);  // Prints "Hello, Eric!"

Concatenate

• Term for adding strings together

• In Java and C languages, this is often done with plus ( + )

• In PHP and some others, it can be done with a period ( . )

Processing example:

String greeting = "Hello, ";
String name = "Eric";
String msg = greeting + name + "!";

println(msg); // Prints “Hello, Eric!”

Delimitate

• Using a character as a delimiter (where to separate the string into separate parts)

• This is often used to take text from .csv files where spreadsheet-like info is all one lump of text into its parts

• An easy example would be separating a sentence into a list of strings per word using a space as a delimiter

Processing example:

String msg = "I'm a banana!";
String[] msgWord = split(msg, " ");

println(msgWord[0]);         // Prints "I'm"
println(msgWord[1]);	       // Prints "a"
println(msgWord[2]);	       // Prints "banana!"

String Functions

Common string functions:

.substring(index of first letter) - starts the string with the index/location of the first letter

.substring(index of first letter, index of limit letter) - starts the string with the index/location of the first letter and ends on the letter before the limit letter

nfc(float or integer, number of digits after decimal) - converts numbers into something more friendly with commas and rounds to the wanted decimal place

.toUpperCase() - changes the entire string to uppercase

.toLowerCase() - changes the entire string to lowercase

.toUpperCase() and .toLowerCase() will come in handy later when comparing user input when users might have a variety of capitalization habits. You can convert their input to something to compare instead of comparing the input to all the possible options.

More Processing string functions can be found here: https://processing.org/reference/String.html

Notation and Escape Sequences

Certain notation can be used within strings to accomplish things like creating a new line (equivalent to pressing the enter or return key), inserting an apostrophe when single quotes are used, inserting a tab, etc. These combinations are called "escape sequences."

Common examples:

\n = new line (sometimes written as "newline") \r = carriage return \t = tab \' = apostrophe (to use when single quotes are used for a string) \" = quotation marks (to use when double quotes are used for a string)