Strings

length(s)

The number of characters in string s.

sizeof(s::AbstractString)

The number of bytes in string s.

*(s, t)

Concatenate strings. The * operator is an alias to this function.

julia> "Hello " * "world"
"Hello world"

^(s, n)

Repeat n times the string s. The repeat function is an alias to this operator.

julia> "Test "^3
"Test Test Test "

string(xs...)

Create a string from any values using the print function.

repr(x)

Create a string from any value using the showall function.

String(s::AbstractString)

Convert a string to a contiguous byte array representation encoded as UTF-8 bytes. This representation is often appropriate for passing strings to C.

transcode(T, src)

Convert string data between Unicode encodings. src is either a String or a Vector{UIntXX} of UTF-XX code units, where XX is 8, 16, or 32. T indicates the encoding of the return value: String to return a (UTF-8 encoded) String or UIntXX to return a Vector{UIntXX} of UTF-XX data. (The alias Cwchar_t can also be used as the integer type, for converting wchar_t* strings used by external C libraries.)

The transcode function succeeds as long as the input data can be reasonably represented in the target encoding; it always succeeds for conversions between UTF-XX encodings, even for invalid Unicode data.

Only conversion to/from UTF-8 is currently supported.

unsafe_string(p::Ptr{UInt8}[, length::Integer])

Copy a string from the address of a C-style (NUL-terminated) string encoded as UTF-8. (The pointer can be safely freed afterwards.) If length is specified (the length of the data in bytes), the string does not have to be NUL-terminated.

This function is labelled “unsafe” because it will crash if p is not a valid memory address to data of the requested length.

See also unsafe_wrap(), which takes a pointer and wraps a string object around it without making a copy.

unsafe_wrap(String, p::Ptr{UInt8}, [length, ]own=false)

Wrap a pointer p to an array of bytes in a String object, interpreting the bytes as UTF-8 encoded characters without making a copy. The optional length argument indicates the length in bytes of the pointer’s data; if it is omitted, the data is assumed to be NUL-terminated. The own argument optionally specifies whether Julia should take ownership of the memory, calling free on the pointer when the array is no longer referenced.

This function is labelled “unsafe” because it will crash if p is not a valid memory address to data of the requested length.

See also unsafe_string(), which takes a pointer and makes a copy of the data.

ascii(s::AbstractString)

Convert a string to String type and check that it contains only ASCII data, otherwise throwing an ArgumentError indicating the position of the first non-ASCII byte.

@r_str() → Regex

Construct a regex, such as r"^[a-z]*$". The regex also accepts one or more flags, listed after the ending quote, to change its behaviour:

• i enables case-insensitive matching
• m treats the ^ and $ tokens as matching the start and end of individual lines, as opposed to the whole string.
• s allows the . modifier to match newlines.
• x enables “comment mode”: whitespace is enabled except when escaped with \, and # is treated as starting a comment.

For example, this regex has all three flags enabled:

julia> match(r"a+.*b+.*?d$"ism, "Goodbye,\nOh, angry,\nBad world\n")
RegexMatch("angry,\nBad world")

@html_str() → Docs.HTML

Create an HTML object from a literal string.

@text_str() → Docs.Text

Create a Text object from a literal string.

normalize_string(s, normalform::Symbol)

Normalize the string s according to one of the four “normal forms” of the Unicode standard: normalform can be :NFC, :NFD, :NFKC, or :NFKD. Normal forms C (canonical composition) and D (canonical decomposition) convert different visually identical representations of the same abstract string into a single canonical form, with form C being more compact. Normal forms KC and KD additionally canonicalize “compatibility equivalents”: they convert characters that are abstractly similar but visually distinct into a single canonical choice (e.g. they expand ligatures into the individual characters), with form KC being more compact.

Alternatively, finer control and additional transformations may be be obtained by calling normalize_string(s; keywords...), where any number of the following boolean keywords options (which all default to false except for compose) are specified:

• compose=false: do not perform canonical composition
• decompose=true: do canonical decomposition instead of canonical composition (compose=true is ignored if present)
• compat=true: compatibility equivalents are canonicalized
• casefold=true: perform Unicode case folding, e.g. for case-insensitive string comparison
• newline2lf=true, newline2ls=true, or newline2ps=true: convert various newline sequences (LF, CRLF, CR, NEL) into a linefeed (LF), line-separation (LS), or paragraph-separation (PS) character, respectively
• stripmark=true: strip diacritical marks (e.g. accents)
• stripignore=true: strip Unicode’s “default ignorable” characters (e.g. the soft hyphen or the left-to-right marker)
• stripcc=true: strip control characters; horizontal tabs and form feeds are converted to spaces; newlines are also converted to spaces unless a newline-conversion flag was specified
• rejectna=true: throw an error if unassigned code points are found
• stable=true: enforce Unicode Versioning Stability

For example, NFKC corresponds to the options compose=true, compat=true, stable=true.

graphemes(s) → iterator over substrings of s

Returns an iterator over substrings of s that correspond to the extended graphemes in the string, as defined by Unicode UAX #29. (Roughly, these are what users would perceive as single characters, even though they may contain more than one codepoint; for example a letter combined with an accent mark is a single grapheme.)

isvalid(value) → Bool

Returns true if the given value is valid for its type, which currently can be either Char or String.

isvalid(T, value) → Bool

Returns true if the given value is valid for that type. Types currently can be either Char or String. Values for Char can be of type Char or UInt32. Values for String can be of that type, or Vector{UInt8}.

isvalid(str, i)

Tells whether index i is valid for the given string.

is_assigned_char(c) → Bool

Returns true if the given char or integer is an assigned Unicode code point.

ismatch(r::Regex, s::AbstractString) → Bool

Test whether a string contains a match of the given regular expression.

match(r::Regex, s::AbstractString[, idx::Integer[, addopts]])

Search for the first match of the regular expression r in s and return a RegexMatch object containing the match, or nothing if the match failed. The matching substring can be retrieved by accessing m.match and the captured sequences can be retrieved by accessing m.captures The optional idx argument specifies an index at which to start the search.

eachmatch(r::Regex, s::AbstractString[, overlap::Bool=false])

Search for all matches of a the regular expression r in s and return a iterator over the matches. If overlap is true, the matching sequences are allowed to overlap indices in the original string, otherwise they must be from distinct character ranges.

matchall(r::Regex, s::AbstractString[, overlap::Bool=false]) → Vector{AbstractString}

Return a vector of the matching substrings from eachmatch.

lpad(string, n, p)

Make a string at least n columns wide when printed, by padding on the left with copies of p.

rpad(string, n, p)

Make a string at least n columns wide when printed, by padding on the right with copies of p.

search(string, chars[, start])

Search for the first occurrence of the given characters within the given string. The second argument may be a single character, a vector or a set of characters, a string, or a regular expression (though regular expressions are only allowed on contiguous strings, such as ASCII or UTF-8 strings). The third argument optionally specifies a starting index. The return value is a range of indexes where the matching sequence is found, such that s[search(s,x)] == x:

search(string, "substring") = start:end such that string[start:end] == "substring", or 0:-1 if unmatched.

search(string, 'c') = index such that string[index] == 'c', or 0 if unmatched.

rsearch(string, chars[, start])

Similar to search, but returning the last occurrence of the given characters within the given string, searching in reverse from start.

searchindex(string, substring[, start])

Similar to search, but return only the start index at which the substring is found, or 0 if it is not.

rsearchindex(string, substring[, start])

Similar to rsearch, but return only the start index at which the substring is found, or 0 if it is not.

contains(haystack, needle)

Determine whether the second argument is a substring of the first.

reverse(s::AbstractString) → AbstractString

Reverses a string.

replace(string, pat, r[, n])

Search for the given pattern pat, and replace each occurrence with r. If n is provided, replace at most n occurrences. As with search, the second argument may be a single character, a vector or a set of characters, a string, or a regular expression. If r is a function, each occurrence is replaced with r(s) where s is the matched substring. If pat is a regular expression and r is a SubstitutionString, then capture group references in r are replaced with the corresponding matched text.

split(string, [chars]; limit=0, keep=true)

Return an array of substrings by splitting the given string on occurrences of the given character delimiters, which may be specified in any of the formats allowed by search‘s second argument (i.e. a single character, collection of characters, string, or regular expression). If chars is omitted, it defaults to the set of all space characters, and keep is taken to be false. The two keyword arguments are optional: they are a maximum size for the result and a flag determining whether empty fields should be kept in the result.

rsplit(string, [chars]; limit=0, keep=true)

Similar to split, but starting from the end of the string.

strip(string[, chars])

Return string with any leading and trailing whitespace removed. If chars (a character, or vector or set of characters) is provided, instead remove characters contained in it.

lstrip(string[, chars])

Return string with any leading whitespace removed. If chars (a character, or vector or set of characters) is provided, instead remove characters contained in it.

rstrip(string[, chars])

Return string with any trailing whitespace removed. If chars (a character, or vector or set of characters) is provided, instead remove characters contained in it.

startswith(string, prefix)

Returns true if string starts with prefix. If prefix is a vector or set of characters, tests whether the first character of string belongs to that set.

endswith(string, suffix)

Returns true if string ends with suffix. If suffix is a vector or set of characters, tests whether the last character of string belongs to that set.

uppercase(string)

Returns string with all characters converted to uppercase.

lowercase(string)

Returns string with all characters converted to lowercase.

ucfirst(string)

Returns string with the first character converted to uppercase.

lcfirst(string)

Returns string with the first character converted to lowercase.

join(strings, delim[, last])

Join an array of strings into a single string, inserting the given delimiter between adjacent strings. If last is given, it will be used instead of delim between the last two strings. For example

join(["apples", "bananas", "pineapples"], ", ", " and ") == "apples, bananas and pineapples"

strings can be any iterable over elements x which are convertible to strings via print(io::IOBuffer, x).

chop(string)

Remove the last character from a string.

chomp(string)

Remove a single trailing newline from a string.

ind2chr(string, i)

Convert a byte index to a character index.

chr2ind(string, i)

Convert a character index to a byte index.

nextind(str, i)

Get the next valid string index after i. Returns a value greater than endof(str) at or after the end of the string.

prevind(str, i)

Get the previous valid string index before i. Returns a value less than 1 at the beginning of the string.

randstring([rng, ]len=8)

Create a random ASCII string of length len, consisting of upper- and lower-case letters and the digits 0-9. The optional rng argument specifies a random number generator, see Random Numbers.

charwidth(c)

Gives the number of columns needed to print a character.

strwidth(s)

Gives the number of columns needed to print a string.

isalnum(c::Union{Char, AbstractString}) → Bool

Tests whether a character is alphanumeric, or whether this is true for all elements of a string. A character is classified as alphabetic if it belongs to the Unicode general category Letter or Number, i.e. a character whose category code begins with ‘L’ or ‘N’.

isalpha(c::Union{Char, AbstractString}) → Bool

Tests whether a character is alphabetic, or whether this is true for all elements of a string. A character is classified as alphabetic if it belongs to the Unicode general category Letter, i.e. a character whose category code begins with ‘L’.

isascii(c::Union{Char, AbstractString}) → Bool

Tests whether a character belongs to the ASCII character set, or whether this is true for all elements of a string.

iscntrl(c::Union{Char, AbstractString}) → Bool

Tests whether a character is a control character, or whether this is true for all elements of a string. Control characters are the non-printing characters of the Latin-1 subset of Unicode.

isdigit(c::Union{Char, AbstractString}) → Bool

Tests whether a character is a numeric digit (0-9), or whether this is true for all elements of a string.

isgraph(c::Union{Char, AbstractString}) → Bool

Tests whether a character is printable, and not a space, or whether this is true for all elements of a string. Any character that would cause a printer to use ink should be classified with isgraph(c)==true.

islower(c::Union{Char, AbstractString}) → Bool

Tests whether a character is a lowercase letter, or whether this is true for all elements of a string. A character is classified as lowercase if it belongs to Unicode category Ll, Letter: Lowercase.

isnumber(c::Union{Char, AbstractString}) → Bool

Tests whether a character is numeric, or whether this is true for all elements of a string. A character is classified as numeric if it belongs to the Unicode general category Number, i.e. a character whose category code begins with ‘N’.

isprint(c::Union{Char, AbstractString}) → Bool

Tests whether a character is printable, including spaces, but not a control character. For strings, tests whether this is true for all elements of the string.

ispunct(c::Union{Char, AbstractString}) → Bool

Tests whether a character belongs to the Unicode general category Punctuation, i.e. a character whose category code begins with ‘P’. For strings, tests whether this is true for all elements of the string.

isspace(c::Union{Char, AbstractString}) → Bool

Tests whether a character is any whitespace character. Includes ASCII characters ‘\t’, ‘\n’, ‘\v’, ‘\f’, ‘\r’, and ‘ ‘, Latin-1 character U+0085, and characters in Unicode category Zs. For strings, tests whether this is true for all elements of the string.

isupper(c::Union{Char, AbstractString}) → Bool

Tests whether a character is an uppercase letter, or whether this is true for all elements of a string. A character is classified as uppercase if it belongs to Unicode category Lu, Letter: Uppercase, or Lt, Letter: Titlecase.

isxdigit(c::Union{Char, AbstractString}) → Bool

Tests whether a character is a valid hexadecimal digit, or whether this is true for all elements of a string.

Symbol(x...) → Symbol

Create a Symbol by concatenating the string representations of the arguments together.

escape_string(str::AbstractString) → AbstractString

General escaping of traditional C and Unicode escape sequences.

unescape_string(s::AbstractString) → AbstractString

General unescaping of traditional C and Unicode escape sequences. Reverse of escape_string(). See also unescape_string().