String

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A string is the variable type that can contain text.

Description

A string may consist of any number of ASCII characters and is enclosed by single-quotes (only in ArmA) or double-quotes. In OFP, strings could alternatively also be written enclosed by curled braces, which are reserved for Code in ArmA.

Examples (OFP):

_string = "here is my string"
_string2 = {It may contain a lot of characters #@$}

Examples (ArmA):

_string = "here is my string"
_string2 = 'It may contain a lot of characters #@$'

If you want to include double quotes (") in strings enclosed by double quotes, the inside double quotes have to be written twice.

_string = "my string ""with"" quotes"
_string2 = 'my other string "with" quotes'

Operators

The only basic operator to be used on strings is "plus". You can use "plus" to concatenate two strings.

_string = "Hello " + "world"

Commands

You can convert any type to a string using the command format. You can also use that command to build together a string out of different elements. See the documentation of format for a closer description.

_string = format ["%1", ["my","array","of","strings"]]
hint _string

=> ["my","array","of","strings"]

Limitations

Since ArmA strings seem not to have any limitation in length.

In OFP v1.96, manipulating and using strings above 2056 characters in length may crash the game.

Other than double quotes ("text"), single quotes ('text') do not seem to support tabs:

_string = "	
	";
copyToClipboard _string;
diag_log format ["%1 %2 %3 x%4x", toArray _string, toArray copyFromClipboard, toArray (_string select [0]), _string];

/*return is good: "[9,10,9] [9,10,9] [9,10,9] x	
	x"*/

_string = '	
	';
copyToClipboard _string;
diag_log format ["%1 %2 %3 x%4x", toArray _string, toArray copyFromClipboard, toArray (_string select [0]), _string];

/*return: "[9,10] [9,10] [9,10] x	
x" - second tab vanished*/

(Example by Rydygier)

Encoding

In OFP the strings were internally ASCII, and the code page used was defined by the product language version (by the fonts which were provided with it).

Since ArmA all strings are Unicode, with UTF-8 encoding used internally.

Note: the encoding should be mostly transparent. The input files can be encoded both in UTF-16 or UTF-8, the toString and toArray functions always convert from/to UTF-16 representation.