Strings
In keeping with its script-like functionality, Icon adds a number of features to make working with strings easier. Most notable among these is the scanning system, which repeatedly calls functions on a string:
s ? write(find("the"))
is a short form of the examples shown earlier. In this case the subject of the find function is placed outside the parameters in front of the question-mark. Icon functions are deliberately (as opposed to automatically) written to identify the subject in parameter lists and allow them to be pulled out in this fashion.
Substrings can be extracted from a string by using a range specification within brackets. A range specification can return a point to a single character, or a slice of the string. Strings can be indexed from either the right or the left. It is important to note that positions within a string are between the characters 1A2B3C4 and can be specified from the right -3A-2B-1C0
For example
"Wikipedia" ==> "W"
"Wikipedia" ==> "k"
"Wikipedia" ==> "a"
"Wikipedia" ==> "Wi"
"Wikipedia" ==> "ia"
"Wikipedia" ==> "iki"
Where the last example shows using a length instead of an ending position
The subscripting specification can be used as a Lvalue within an expression. This can be used to insert strings into another string or delete parts of a string. For example,
s := "abc" s := "123" s now has a value of "a123c" s := "abcdefg" s := "ABCD" s now has a value of "abABCDefg" s := "abcdefg" s := "" s now has a value of "abefg"
Read more about this topic: Icon (programming Language)
Famous quotes containing the word strings:
“it was older sure than this year’s cutting,
Or even last year’s or the year’s before.
The wood was gray and the bark warping off it
And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis
Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Met face to face, these Indians in their native woods looked like the sinister and slouching fellows whom you meet picking up strings and paper in the streets of a city. There is, in fact, a remarkable and unexpected resemblance between the degraded savage and the lowest classes in a great city. The one is no more a child of nature than the other. In the progress of degradation the distinction of races is soon lost.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Until, accustomed to disappointments, you can let yourself rule and be ruled by these strings or emanations that connect everything together, you haven’t fully exorcised the demon of doubt that sets you in motion like a rocking horse that cannot stop rocking.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)