Strings and Characters

Strings and characters are used as follows:

• Strings are collections of characters.
• Strings have the type String and characters have the type Character.
• Strings can be used to work with text in a Unicode-compliant way.
• Strings are immutable.

String and character literals are enclosed in double quotation marks ("):

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let someString = "Hello, world!"

String literals may contain escape sequences. An escape sequence starts with a backslash (\):

• \0: Null character
• \\: Backslash
• \t: Horizontal tab
• \n: Line feed
• \r: Carriage return
• \": Double quotation mark
• \': Single quotation mark
• \u: A Unicode scalar value, written as \u{x}, where x is a 1–8 digit hexadecimal number, which needs to be a valid Unicode scalar value (i.e., in the range 0 to 0xD7FF and 0xE000 to 0x10FFFF inclusive).

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// Declare a constant which contains two lines of text

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// (separated by the line feed character `\n`), and ends

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// with a thumbs up emoji, which has code point U+1F44D (0x1F44D).

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//

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let thumbsUpText =

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"This is the first line.\nThis is the second line with an emoji: \u{1F44D}"

The type Character represents a single, human-readable character. Characters are extended grapheme clusters, which consist of one or more Unicode scalars.

For example, the single character ü can be represented in several ways in Unicode. First, it can be represented by a single Unicode scalar value ü ("LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS", code point U+00FC). Second, the same single character can be represented by two Unicode scalar values: u ("LATIN SMALL LETTER U", code point +0075), and "COMBINING DIAERESIS" (code point U+0308). The combining Unicode scalar value is applied to the scalar before it, which turns a u into a ü.

Still, both variants represent the same human-readable character ü:

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let singleScalar: Character = "\u{FC}"

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// `singleScalar` is `ü`

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let twoScalars: Character = "\u{75}\u{308}"

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// `twoScalars` is `ü`

Another example where multiple Unicode scalar values are rendered as a single, human-readable character is a flag emoji. These emojis consist of two "REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER" Unicode scalar values:

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// Declare a constant for a string with a single character, the emoji

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// for the Canadian flag, which consists of two Unicode scalar values:

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// - REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER C (U+1F1E8)

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// - REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER A (U+1F1E6)

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//

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let canadianFlag: Character = "\u{1F1E8}\u{1F1E6}"

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// `canadianFlag` is `🇨🇦`

String fields and functions

Strings have multiple built-in functions you can use:

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  let length: Int

  
  

  Returns the number of characters in the string as an integer.

  
  

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  let example = "hello"

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  // Find the number of elements of the string.

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  let length = example.length

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  // `length` is `5`

  
  
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  let utf8: [UInt8]

  
  

  The byte array of the UTF-8 encoding.

  
  

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  let flowers = "Flowers \u{1F490}"

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  let bytes = flowers.utf8

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  // `bytes` is `[70, 108, 111, 119, 101, 114, 115, 32, 240, 159, 146, 144]`

  
  
• 
  

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  view fun concat(_ other: String): String

  
  

  Concatenates the string other to the end of the original string, but does not modify the original string. This function creates a new string whose length is the sum of the lengths of the string the function is called on and the string given as a parameter.

  
  

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  let example = "hello"

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  let new = "world"

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  // Concatenate the new string onto the example string and return the new string.

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  let helloWorld = example.concat(new)

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  // `helloWorld` is now `"helloworld"`

  
  
• 
  

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  view fun slice(from: Int, upTo: Int): String

  
  

  Returns a string slice of the characters in the given string from start index from up to, but not including, the end index upTo. This function creates a new string whose length is upTo - from. It does not modify the original string. If either of the parameters are out of the bounds of the string, or the indices are invalid (from > upTo), then the function will fail.

  
  

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  let example = "helloworld"

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  // Create a new slice of part of the original string.

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  let slice = example.slice(from: 3, upTo: 6)

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  // `slice` is now `"low"`

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  // Run-time error: Out of bounds index, the program aborts.

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  let outOfBounds = example.slice(from: 2, upTo: 10)

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  // Run-time error: Invalid indices, the program aborts.

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  let invalidIndices = example.slice(from: 2, upTo: 1)

  
  
• 
  

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  view fun decodeHex(): [UInt8]

  
  

  Returns an array containing the bytes represented by the given hexadecimal string.

  The given string must only contain hexadecimal characters and must have an even length. If the string is malformed, the program aborts.

  
  

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  let example = "436164656e636521"

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  example.decodeHex() // is `[67, 97, 100, 101, 110, 99, 101, 33]`

  
  
• 
  

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  view fun toLower(): String

  
  

  Returns a string where all upper case letters are replaced with lowercase characters.

  
  

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  let example = "Flowers"

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  example.toLower() // is `flowers`

  
  
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  view fun replaceAll(of: String, with: String): String

  
  

  Returns a string where all occurences of of are replaced with with. If of is empty, it matches at the beginning of the string and after each UTF-8 sequence yielding k+1 replacements for a string of length k.

  
  

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  let example = "abababa"

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  example.replaceAll(of: "a", with: "o") // is `obobobo`

  
  
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  view fun split(separator: String): [String]

  
  

  Returns the variable-sized array of strings created splitting the receiver string on the separator.

  
  

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  let example = "hello world"

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  example.split(separator: " ") // is `["hello", "world"]`

  
  

The String type also provides the following functions:

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  view fun String.encodeHex(_ data: [UInt8]): String

  
  

  Returns a hexadecimal string for the given byte array

  
  

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  let data = [1 as UInt8, 2, 3, 0xCA, 0xDE]

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  String.encodeHex(data) // is `"010203cade"`

  
  
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  view fun String.join(_ strings: [String], separator: String): String

  
  

  Returns the string created by joining the array of strings with the provided separator.

  
  

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  let strings = ["hello", "world"]

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  String.join(strings, " ") // is "hello world"

  
  

Strings are also indexable, returning a Character value.

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let str = "abc"

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let c = str[0] // is the Character "a"

• 
  

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  view fun String.fromUTF8(_ input: [UInt8]): String?

  
  

  Attempts to convert a UTF-8 encoded byte array into a String. This function returns nil if the byte array contains invalid UTF-8, such as incomplete codepoint sequences or undefined graphemes.

  For a given string s, String.fromUTF8(s.utf8) is equivalent to wrapping s up in an optional.

Character fields and functions

Character values can be converted into String values using the toString function:

• 
  

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  view fun toString(): String`

  
  

  Returns the string representation of the character.

  
  

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  let c: Character = "x"

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  c.toString() // is "x"

  
  
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  view fun String.fromCharacters(_ characters: [Character]): String

  
  

  Builds a new String value from an array of Characters. Because Strings are immutable, this operation makes a copy of the input array.

  
  

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  let rawUwU: [Character] = ["U", "w", "U"]

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  let uwu: String = String.fromCharacters(rawUwU) // "UwU"

  
  
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  let utf8: [UInt8]

  
  

  The byte array of the UTF-8 encoding.

  
  

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  let a: Character = "a"

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  let a_bytes = a.utf8 // `a_bytes` is `[97]`

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  let bouquet: Character = "\u{1F490}"

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  let bouquet_bytes = bouquet.utf8 // `bouquet_bytes` is `[240, 159, 146, 144]`