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A string in Emacs Lisp is an array that contains an ordered sequence of characters. Strings are used as names of symbols, buffers, and files, to send messages to users, to hold text being copied between buffers, and for many other purposes. Because strings are so important, Emacs Lisp has many functions expressly for manipulating them. Emacs Lisp programs use strings more often than individual characters.
1.1 String and Character Basics | Basic properties of strings and characters. | |
1.2 The Predicates for Strings | Testing whether an object is a string or char. | |
1.3 Creating Strings | Functions to allocate new strings. | |
1.4 Comparison of Characters and Strings | Comparing characters or strings. | |
1.5 Conversion of Characters and Strings | Converting characters or strings and vice versa. | |
1.6 Formatting Strings | format : XEmacs’s analog of printf .
| |
1.7 Character Case | Case conversion functions. | |
1.8 The Case Table | Customizing case conversion. |
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Strings in Emacs Lisp are arrays that contain an ordered sequence of characters. Characters are represented in Emacs Lisp as integers; whether an integer was intended as a character or not is determined only by how it is used. Thus, strings really contain integers.
The length of a string (like any array) is fixed and independent of the string contents, and cannot be altered. Strings in Lisp are not terminated by a distinguished character code. (By contrast, strings in C are terminated by a character with ASCII code 0.) This means that any character, including the null character (ASCII code 0), is a valid element of a string.
Since strings are considered arrays, you can operate on them with the
general array functions. (@xref{Sequences Arrays Vectors}.) For
example, you can access or change individual characters in a string
using the functions aref
and aset
(@pxref{Array
Functions}).
Each character in a string is stored in a single byte. Therefore, numbers not in the range 0 to 255 are truncated when stored into a string. This means that a string takes up much less memory than a vector of the same length.
Sometimes key sequences are represented as strings. When a string is a key sequence, string elements in the range 128 to 255 represent meta characters (which are extremely large integers) rather than keyboard events in the range 128 to 255.
Strings cannot hold characters that have the hyper, super or alt modifiers; they can hold ASCII control characters, but no other control characters. They do not distinguish case in ASCII control characters. @xref{Character Type}, for more information about representation of meta and other modifiers for keyboard input characters.
Strings are useful for holding regular expressions. You can also
match regular expressions against strings (@pxref{Regexp Search}). The
functions match-string
(@pxref{Simple Match Data}) and
replace-match
(@pxref{Replacing Match}) are useful for
decomposing and modifying strings based on regular expression matching.
Like a buffer, a string can contain extents in it. These extents are
created when a function such as buffer-substring
is called on a
region with duplicable extents in it. When the string is inserted into
a buffer, the extents are inserted along with it. @xref{Duplicable
Extents}.
@xref{Text}, for information about functions that display strings or copy them into buffers. @xref{Character Type}, and @ref{String Type}, for information about the syntax of characters and strings.
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For more information about general sequence and array predicates, see @ref{Sequences Arrays Vectors}, and @ref{Arrays}.
This function returns t
if object is a string, nil
otherwise.
This function returns t
if object is a string or a
character (i.e., an integer), nil
otherwise.
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The following functions create strings, either from scratch, or by putting strings together, or by taking them apart.
This function returns a string made up of count repetitions of character. If count is negative, an error is signaled.
(make-string 5 ?x) ⇒ "xxxxx" (make-string 0 ?x) ⇒ ""
Other functions to compare with this one include char-to-string
(see section Conversion of Characters and Strings), make-vector
(@pxref{Vectors}), and
make-list
(@pxref{Building Lists}).
This function returns a new string which consists of those characters from string in the range from (and including) the character at the index start up to (but excluding) the character at the index end. The first character is at index zero.
(substring "abcdefg" 0 3) ⇒ "abc"
Here the index for ‘a’ is 0, the index for ‘b’ is 1, and the
index for ‘c’ is 2. Thus, three letters, ‘abc’, are copied
from the string "abcdefg"
. The index 3 marks the character
position up to which the substring is copied. The character whose index
is 3 is actually the fourth character in the string.
A negative number counts from the end of the string, so that -1 signifies the index of the last character of the string. For example:
(substring "abcdefg" -3 -1) ⇒ "ef"
In this example, the index for ‘e’ is -3, the index for ‘f’ is -2, and the index for ‘g’ is -1. Therefore, ‘e’ and ‘f’ are included, and ‘g’ is excluded.
When nil
is used as an index, it stands for the length of the
string. Thus,
(substring "abcdefg" -3 nil) ⇒ "efg"
Omitting the argument end is equivalent to specifying nil
.
It follows that (substring string 0)
returns a copy of all
of string.
(substring "abcdefg" 0) ⇒ "abcdefg"
But we recommend copy-sequence
for this purpose (@pxref{Sequence
Functions}).
If the characters copied from string have text properties, the properties are copied into the new string also. @xref{Text Properties}.
A wrong-type-argument
error is signaled if either start or
end is not an integer or nil
. An args-out-of-range
error is signaled if start indicates a character following
end, or if either integer is out of range for string.
Contrast this function with buffer-substring
(@pxref{Buffer
Contents}), which returns a string containing a portion of the text in
the current buffer. The beginning of a string is at index 0, but the
beginning of a buffer is at index 1.
This function returns a new string consisting of the characters in the
arguments passed to it (along with their text properties, if any). The
arguments may be strings, lists of numbers, or vectors of numbers; they
are not themselves changed. If concat
receives no arguments, it
returns an empty string.
(concat "abc" "-def")
⇒ "abc-def"
(concat "abc" (list 120 (+ 256 121)) [122])
⇒ "abcxyz"
;; nil
is an empty sequence.
(concat "abc" nil "-def")
⇒ "abc-def"
(concat "The " "quick brown " "fox.")
⇒ "The quick brown fox."
(concat)
⇒ ""
The second example above shows how characters stored in strings are taken modulo 256. In other words, each character in the string is stored in one byte.
The concat
function always constructs a new string that is
not eq
to any existing string.
When an argument is an integer (not a sequence of integers), it is
converted to a string of digits making up the decimal printed
representation of the integer. Don’t use this feature; we plan
to eliminate it. If you already use this feature, change your programs
now! The proper way to convert an integer to a decimal number in this
way is with format
(see section Formatting Strings) or
number-to-string
(see section Conversion of Characters and Strings).
(concat 137) ⇒ "137" (concat 54 321) ⇒ "54321"
For information about other concatenation functions, see the
description of mapconcat
in @ref{Mapping Functions},
vconcat
in @ref{Vectors}, and append
in @ref{Building
Lists}.
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This function returns t
if the arguments represent the same
character, nil
otherwise. This function ignores differences
in case if case-fold-search
is non-nil
.
(char-equal ?x ?x) ⇒ t (char-to-string (+ 256 ?x)) ⇒ "x" (char-equal ?x (+ 256 ?x)) ⇒ t
This function returns t
if the characters of the two strings
match exactly; case is significant.
(string= "abc" "abc") ⇒ t (string= "abc" "ABC") ⇒ nil (string= "ab" "ABC") ⇒ nil
The function string=
ignores the text properties of the
two strings. To compare strings in a way that compares their text
properties also, use equal
(@pxref{Equality Predicates}).
string-equal
is another name for string=
.
This function compares two strings a character at a time. First it
scans both the strings at once to find the first pair of corresponding
characters that do not match. If the lesser character of those two is
the character from string1, then string1 is less, and this
function returns t
. If the lesser character is the one from
string2, then string1 is greater, and this function returns
nil
. If the two strings match entirely, the value is nil
.
Pairs of characters are compared by their ASCII codes. Keep in mind that lower case letters have higher numeric values in the ASCII character set than their upper case counterparts; numbers and many punctuation characters have a lower numeric value than upper case letters.
(string< "abc" "abd") ⇒ t (string< "abd" "abc") ⇒ nil (string< "123" "abc") ⇒ t
When the strings have different lengths, and they match up to the
length of string1, then the result is t
. If they match up
to the length of string2, the result is nil
. A string of
no characters is less than any other string.
(string< "" "abc") ⇒ t (string< "ab" "abc") ⇒ t (string< "abc" "") ⇒ nil (string< "abc" "ab") ⇒ nil (string< "" "") ⇒ nil
string-lessp
is another name for string<
.
See also compare-buffer-substrings
in @ref{Comparing Text}, for
a way to compare text in buffers. The function string-match
,
which matches a regular expression against a string, can be used
for a kind of string comparison; see @ref{Regexp Search}.
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This section describes functions for conversions between characters,
strings and integers. format
and prin1-to-string
(@pxref{Output Functions}) can also convert Lisp objects into strings.
read-from-string
(@pxref{Input Functions}) can “convert” a
string representation of a Lisp object into an object.
@xref{Documentation}, for functions that produce textual descriptions
of text characters and general input events
(single-key-description
and text-char-description
). These
functions are used primarily for making help messages.
This function returns a new string with a length of one character. The value of character, modulo 256, is used to initialize the element of the string.
This function is similar to make-string
with an integer argument
of 1. (See section Creating Strings.) This conversion can also be done with
format
using the ‘%c’ format specification.
(See section Formatting Strings.)
(char-to-string ?x) ⇒ "x" (char-to-string (+ 256 ?x)) ⇒ "x" (make-string 1 ?x) ⇒ "x"
This function returns the first character in string. If the string is empty, the function returns 0. The value is also 0 when the first character of string is the null character, ASCII code 0.
(string-to-char "ABC") ⇒ 65 (string-to-char "xyz") ⇒ 120 (string-to-char "") ⇒ 0 (string-to-char "\000") ⇒ 0
This function may be eliminated in the future if it does not seem useful enough to retain.
This function returns a string consisting of the printed representation of number, which may be an integer or a floating point number. The value starts with a sign if the argument is negative.
(number-to-string 256) ⇒ "256" (number-to-string -23) ⇒ "-23" (number-to-string -23.5) ⇒ "-23.5"
int-to-string
is a semi-obsolete alias for this function.
See also the function format
in Formatting Strings.
This function returns the numeric value of the characters in string, read in base ten. It skips spaces and tabs at the beginning of string, then reads as much of string as it can interpret as a number. (On some systems it ignores other whitespace at the beginning, not just spaces and tabs.) If the first character after the ignored whitespace is not a digit or a minus sign, this function returns 0.
(string-to-number "256") ⇒ 256 (string-to-number "25 is a perfect square.") ⇒ 25 (string-to-number "X256") ⇒ 0 (string-to-number "-4.5") ⇒ -4.5
string-to-int
is an obsolete alias for this function.
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Formatting means constructing a string by substitution of computed values at various places in a constant string. This string controls how the other values are printed as well as where they appear; it is called a format string.
Formatting is often useful for computing messages to be displayed. In
fact, the functions message
and error
provide the same
formatting feature described here; they differ from format
only
in how they use the result of formatting.
This function returns a new string that is made by copying string and then replacing any format specification in the copy with encodings of the corresponding objects. The arguments objects are the computed values to be formatted.
A format specification is a sequence of characters beginning with a
‘%’. Thus, if there is a ‘%d’ in string, the
format
function replaces it with the printed representation of
one of the values to be formatted (one of the arguments objects).
For example:
(format "The value of fill-column is %d." fill-column) ⇒ "The value of fill-column is 72."
If string contains more than one format specification, the format specifications correspond with successive values from objects. Thus, the first format specification in string uses the first such value, the second format specification uses the second such value, and so on. Any extra format specifications (those for which there are no corresponding values) cause unpredictable behavior. Any extra values to be formatted are ignored.
Certain format specifications require values of particular types. However, no error is signaled if the value actually supplied fails to have the expected type. Instead, the output is likely to be meaningless.
Here is a table of valid format specifications:
Replace the specification with the printed representation of the object, made without quoting. Thus, strings are represented by their contents alone, with no ‘"’ characters, and symbols appear without ‘\’ characters.
If there is no corresponding object, the empty string is used.
Replace the specification with the printed representation of the object, made with quoting. Thus, strings are enclosed in ‘"’ characters, and ‘\’ characters appear where necessary before special characters.
If there is no corresponding object, the empty string is used.
Replace the specification with the base-eight representation of an integer.
Replace the specification with the base-ten representation of an integer.
Replace the specification with the base-sixteen representation of an integer.
Replace the specification with the character which is the value given.
Replace the specification with the exponential notation for a floating point number.
Replace the specification with the decimal-point notation for a floating point number.
Replace the specification with notation for a floating point number, using either exponential notation or decimal-point notation whichever is shorter.
A single ‘%’ is placed in the string. This format specification is
unusual in that it does not use a value. For example, (format "%%
%d" 30)
returns "% 30"
.
Any other format character results in an ‘Invalid format operation’ error.
Here are several examples:
(format "The name of this buffer is %s." (buffer-name)) ⇒ "The name of this buffer is strings.texi." (format "The buffer object prints as %s." (current-buffer)) ⇒ "The buffer object prints as #<buffer strings.texi>." (format "The octal value of %d is %o, and the hex value is %x." 18 18 18) ⇒ "The octal value of 18 is 22, and the hex value is 12."
All the specification characters allow an optional numeric prefix between the ‘%’ and the character. The optional numeric prefix defines the minimum width for the object. If the printed representation of the object contains fewer characters than this, then it is padded. The padding is on the left if the prefix is positive (or starts with zero) and on the right if the prefix is negative. The padding character is normally a space, but if the numeric prefix starts with a zero, zeros are used for padding.
(format "%06d is padded on the left with zeros" 123) ⇒ "000123 is padded on the left with zeros" (format "%-6d is padded on the right" 123) ⇒ "123 is padded on the right"
format
never truncates an object’s printed representation, no
matter what width you specify. Thus, you can use a numeric prefix to
specify a minimum spacing between columns with no risk of losing
information.
In the following three examples, ‘%7s’ specifies a minimum width
of 7. In the first case, the string inserted in place of ‘%7s’ has
only 3 letters, so 4 blank spaces are inserted for padding. In the
second case, the string "specification"
is 13 letters wide but is
not truncated. In the third case, the padding is on the right.
(format "The word `%7s' actually has %d letters in it." "foo" (length "foo")) ⇒ "The word ` foo' actually has 3 letters in it."
(format "The word `%7s' actually has %d letters in it." "specification" (length "specification")) ⇒ "The word `specification' actually has 13 letters in it."
(format "The word `%-7s' actually has %d letters in it." "foo" (length "foo")) ⇒ "The word `foo ' actually has 3 letters in it."
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The character case functions change the case of single characters or of the contents of strings. The functions convert only alphabetic characters (the letters ‘A’ through ‘Z’ and ‘a’ through ‘z’); other characters are not altered. The functions do not modify the strings that are passed to them as arguments.
The examples below use the characters ‘X’ and ‘x’ which have ASCII codes 88 and 120 respectively.
This function converts a character or a string to lower case.
When the argument to downcase
is a string, the function creates
and returns a new string in which each letter in the argument that is
upper case is converted to lower case. When the argument to
downcase
is a character, downcase
returns the
corresponding lower case character. This value is an integer. If the
original character is lower case, or is not a letter, then the value
equals the original character.
(downcase "The cat in the hat") ⇒ "the cat in the hat" (downcase ?X) ⇒ 120
This function converts a character or a string to upper case.
When the argument to upcase
is a string, the function creates
and returns a new string in which each letter in the argument that is
lower case is converted to upper case.
When the argument to upcase
is a character, upcase
returns the corresponding upper case character. This value is an integer.
If the original character is upper case, or is not a letter, then the
value equals the original character.
(upcase "The cat in the hat") ⇒ "THE CAT IN THE HAT" (upcase ?x) ⇒ 88
This function capitalizes strings or characters. If string-or-char is a string, the function creates and returns a new string, whose contents are a copy of string-or-char in which each word has been capitalized. This means that the first character of each word is converted to upper case, and the rest are converted to lower case.
The definition of a word is any sequence of consecutive characters that are assigned to the word constituent syntax class in the current syntax table (@xref{Syntax Class Table}).
When the argument to capitalize
is a character, capitalize
has the same result as upcase
.
(capitalize "The cat in the hat") ⇒ "The Cat In The Hat" (capitalize "THE 77TH-HATTED CAT") ⇒ "The 77th-Hatted Cat"
(capitalize ?x) ⇒ 88
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You can customize case conversion by installing a special case table. A case table specifies the mapping between upper case and lower case letters. It affects both the string and character case conversion functions (see the previous section) and those that apply to text in the buffer (@pxref{Case Changes}). You need a case table if you are using a language which has letters other than the standard ASCII letters.
A case table is a list of this form:
(downcase upcase canonicalize equivalences)
where each element is either nil
or a string of length 256. The
element downcase says how to map each character to its lower-case
equivalent. The element upcase maps each character to its
upper-case equivalent. If lower and upper case characters are in
one-to-one correspondence, use nil
for upcase; then XEmacs
deduces the upcase table from downcase.
For some languages, upper and lower case letters are not in one-to-one correspondence. There may be two different lower case letters with the same upper case equivalent. In these cases, you need to specify the maps for both directions.
The element canonicalize maps each character to a canonical equivalent; any two characters that are related by case-conversion have the same canonical equivalent character.
The element equivalences is a map that cyclicly permutes each equivalence class (of characters with the same canonical equivalent). (For ordinary ASCII, this would map ‘a’ into ‘A’ and ‘A’ into ‘a’, and likewise for each set of equivalent characters.)
When you construct a case table, you can provide nil
for
canonicalize; then Emacs fills in this string from upcase
and downcase. You can also provide nil
for
equivalences; then Emacs fills in this string from
canonicalize. In a case table that is actually in use, those
components are non-nil
. Do not try to specify equivalences
without also specifying canonicalize.
Each buffer has a case table. XEmacs also has a standard case table which is copied into each buffer when you create the buffer. Changing the standard case table doesn’t affect any existing buffers.
Here are the functions for working with case tables:
This predicate returns non-nil
if object is a valid case
table.
This function makes table the standard case table, so that it will apply to any buffers created subsequently.
This returns the standard case table.
This function returns the current buffer’s case table.
This sets the current buffer’s case table to table.
The following three functions are convenient subroutines for packages that define non-ASCII character sets. They modify a string downcase-table provided as an argument; this should be a string to be used as the downcase part of a case table. They also modify the standard syntax table. @xref{Syntax Tables}.
This function specifies a pair of corresponding letters, one upper case and one lower case.
This function makes characters l and r a matching pair of case-invariant delimiters.
This function makes char case-invariant, with syntax syntax.
This command displays a description of the contents of the current buffer’s case table.
You can load the library ‘iso-syntax’ to set up the standard syntax table and define a case table for the 8-bit ISO Latin 1 character set.
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