String + String

John Board · 2012-03-20 23:30

G'day, I know that this is quite a basic question, but it has been stumping me, how can I add 2 strings together easily, or append a charecter to the end of a string?

Thanks,

John

[EDIT] To clarify, add 2 VARIABLES (String) together.

kuroneko · 2012-03-20 23:48

Seems to be a popular subject, have a look at this thread re: string combining.

John Board · 2012-03-21 01:22

I had actually looked at that thread before, I'm quite a newbie to SPIN, and that didn't help much, I am wanting to add string VARIABLES together, not just plain string(..)'s.

Dr_Acula · 2012-03-21 01:32

Post #12 on that thread above has the code to add variables. (ie the Basic equivalent of A$ = B$ + C$).

Also code for appending to a string.

It is a bit more difficult to work with strings in Spin compared with some other languages so it is ok if you are finding it hard.

MagIO2 · 2012-03-21 02:31

Maybe some more words about the stringhandling:
The propeller does not have dynamic memory allocation. This means when you want to add/append/concatenate strings you have to be sure that the buffer used to hold the result is big enough in advance!

@Dr_Acula:
Actually the basic equivalent of what you do inside the stringConcatenate-function is:
B$ = B$ + C$
return B$
The A$= part you mention is outside of the stringConcatenate and is optional.

stringConcatenate( @string1, @string2 ) would ommit the A$-part but still work and produce the same result
str_ptr := stringConcatenate( @string1, @string2 ) would do it A$=-style - but there is no point in doing this assignment.

With what I said in the first sentence something like this is a BUG:
str_ptr := stringConcatenate( string("Test"), string(" concatenation") ) because string("Test") does not reserve more bytes than needed for "Test" and the concatenation would overwrite bytes it should not touch. (using string() for the second parameter is fine!)

Dr_Acula · 2012-03-21 03:31

Good points MagIO2.

Yes, I agree you need to break down A$=B$+C$ into two parts A$=B$ and then A$ =A$+C$.

To add to the link to that string handling code (which is Kye's string handler plus a few Basic like instructions I added), in your "main" program you need to declare some generic string variables:

VAR
   byte LineOfText1[80] ' general purpose string buffer
   byte LineOfText2[80] ' general purpose string buffer
   byte LineOfText3[80] ' general purpose string buffer

move a 'fixed' value into a string variable with

      str.copy(string("hello"),@lineoftext1) ' copy fixed value into a string

and then everything is referenced with the @ symbol. This was a whole lot of demo code I used to test strings. It is all commented at the moment but you can see some of the ideas how to manipulate strings

      'printstring(@lineoftext1)                         ' testing string functions
      'str.left(@lineoftext1,@lineoftext2,3)  ' find leftmost characters in a string
      'printstring(@lineoftext2)
      'str.trimstring(@lineoftext1)
      'printstring(@lineoftext1)
      'str.trimstring(@lineoftext1)
      'str.mid(@lineoftext1,@lineoftext2,4,2) ' find middle characters in a string
      'printstring(@lineoftext2)
      'printstring(str.integertodecimal(str.len(@lineoftext2),5))
      'str.copy(string("hello"),@lineoftext1) ' copy fixed value into a string
      'printstring(@lineoftext1)
      'str.str(@lineoftext1,55) ' decimal to string with no leading zeros
      'printstring(@lineoftext1)
      'str.stringfill(@lineoftext1,10,65)
      'printstring(@lineoftext1)
      'str.str(@lineoftext1,1234)' convert to string
      'str.str(@lineoftext1,str.decimaltointeger(@lineoftext1)) ' convert back
      'printstring(@lineoftext1)
      ' str.left(@lineoftext1,@lineoftext2,str.len(@lineoftext1)-4) ' remove extension
      ' printstring(@lineoftext2) ' print it out

Kye's string object has an official name if you want to use the .spin object. See attachment.

  str: "ASCII0_STREngine.spin"

Summary of the string instructions below. Most are Kye's and follow the format "instruction, destination, source" but some of the ones I wrote follow the Basic syntax of "source, destination".

Kye's "buildstring" has some additional tricks like being able to handle backspace.

PUB buildString(character) '' 4 Stack longs
PUB builtString(resetString) '' 4 Stack Longs
PUB builderNumber '' 3 Stack Longs
PUB builderFull '' 3 Stack Longs
PUB stringCompareCS(characters, otherCharacters) '' 5 Stack Longs
PUB stringCompareCI(characters, otherCharacters) '' 9 Stack Longs
PUB stringCopy(whereToPut, whereToGet) '' 5 Stack Longs
PUB stringConcatenate(whereToPut, whereToGet) '' 5 Stack Longs
PUB stringToLowerCase(characters) '' 4 Stack Longs
PUB stringToUpperCase(characters) '' 4 Stack Longs
PUB trimString(characters) '' 8 Stack Longs
PUB tokenizeString(characters) '' 8 Stack Longs
PUB findCharacter(stringToSearch, characterToFind) '' 5 Stack Longs
PUB replaceCharacter(stringToSearch, characterToReplace, characterToReplaceWith) '' 11 Stack Longs
PUB replaceAllCharacters(stringToSearch, characterToReplace, characterToReplaceWith) '' 17 Stack Longs
PUB findString(stringToSearch, stringToFind) | index, size '' 7 Stack Longs
PUB replaceString(stringToSearch, stringToReplace, stringToReplaceWith) '' 13 Stack Longs
PUB replaceAllStrings(stringToSearch, stringToReplace, stringToReplaceWith) '' 19 Stack Longs
PUB integerToDecimal(number, length) '' 5 Stack Longs
PUB integerToHexadecimal(number, length) '' 5 Stack Longs
PUB integerToBinary(number, length) '' 5 Stack Longs
PUB decimalToInteger(characters) | sign '' 10 Stack Longs
PUB hexadecimalToInteger(characters) | sign '' 10 Stack Longs
PUB binaryToInteger(characters) | sign '' 10 Stack Longs
PRI ignoreCase(character) ' 4 Stack Longs
PRI ignoreSpace(characters) ' 4 Stack Longs
PRI checkSign(characters, signAddress) ' 5 Stack Longs
PRI checkDigit(characters, low, high) ' 5 Stack Longs
PUB endsWithString(stringToSearch, stringToFind) '' 12 Stack Longs
PUB Left(Source, Destination,Number)   ' returns the left number of characters
PUB Len(Source) ' returns the length of the string
PUB Mid(Source,Destination,Start,Number) ' returns strings starting at start with number characters
PUB Copy(Source,Destination) ' reverse order to stringcopy. Can also use to create strings eg copy(string("test"),@lineoftext1)
PUB Str(Destination,Number) | n' convert a number to a string representation. Uses Basic syntax, ie leading character is a space if +ve, and is - if negative  
PUB Stringfill(Destination, Number,AsciiValue)' fill string with a string, eg 3,65 is"AAA" and 2,32 is "  "
PUB Instr(Source,AsciiValue) | j ' find asciivalue in Source. Returns 0 if not found

String + String

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