Strings in Macro

Note

For a list and details of functions and operators on strings, see String functions.

Strings are sets of characters. They are unlimited in length. String literals are defined using single or double quotes:

s = "foo"
s = 'bar'

You can concatenate strings with numbers, dates and other strings. The result is always a string :

parameter = "z"
level = 500
file_name = parameter & level & ".grib"
print (file_name)

will print the following string:

z500.grib

You can retrieve substrings using the substring() command :

print (substring ("Metview", 4, 7))

will print the following string:

view

You can split strings into substrings, using the function parse() . This takes two strings as input : the first is the string to split, the second is a string consisting of all the separators; it returns a list whose elements are the individual strings resulting from the split (or tokens):

n = parse("z500.grib", ".")
print ("name = ", n[1], " extension = ", n[2])

will print the following string:

name = z500 extension = grib

Note that the separator character(s) are not part of the output token list.

You can create multi-line strings, using the inline keyword:

s = string inline
This is a multiline string, with all sorts of characters such as double quotes (") or single quotes (') which are ignored in the inline context.
end inline

Special characters

Some strings that are not easy to enter via a keyboard are defined as global variables. These are:

newline: a new line character
tab: a tab character

An example of using these is:

greeting = "Hello" & tab & "world" & newline & "Pleased to see you!"
print(greeting)