Guide: PLT Scheme

1`` | Welcome to PLT Scheme
2`` | Scheme Essentials
3`` | Built-In Datatypes
4`` | Expressions and Definitions
5`` | Programmer-Defined Datatypes
6`` | Modules
7`` | Contracts
8`` | Input and Output
9`` | Regular Expressions
10`` | Exceptions and Control
11`` | Iterations and Comprehensions
12`` | Pattern Matching
13`` | Classes and Objects
14`` | Units (Components)
15`` | Reflection and Dynamic Evaluation
16`` | Macros
17`` | Performance
18`` | Running and Creating Executables
19`` | Compilation and Configuration
20`` | More Libraries
| Bibliography
| Index

Version: 4.0.2
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#### 3.4`` Strings (Unicode)

A string is a fixed-length array of characters. It prints using doublequotes, where doublequote and backslash characters within the string are escaped with backslashes. Other common string escapes are supported, including \n for a linefeed, \r for a carriage return, octal escapes using \ followed by up to three octal digits, and hexadecimal escapes with \u (up to four digits). Unprintable characters in a string are normally shown with \u when the string is printed.

Reading Strings in Reference: PLT Scheme documents the fine points of the syntax of strings.

The display procedure directly writes the characters of a string to the current output port (see Input and Output), in contrast to the string-constant syntax used to print a string result.

Examples:
> "Apple"
"Apple"
> "\u03BB"
"λ"
> (display "Apple")
Apple
> (display "a \"quoted\" thing")
a "quoted" thing
> (display "two\nlines")

two
lines

> (display "\u03BB")
λ

A string can be mutable or immutable; strings written directly as expressions are immutable, but most other strings are mutable. The make-string procedure creates a mutable string given a length and optional fill character. The string-ref procedure accesses a character from a string (with 0-based indexing); the string-set! procedure changes a character in a mutable string.

Examples:
> (string-ref "Apple" 0)
#\A
> (define s (make-string 5 #\.))
> s
"....."
> (string-set! s 2 #\λ)
> s
"..λ.."

String ordering and case operations are generally locale-independent; that is, they work the same for all users. A few locale-dependent operations are provided that allow the way that strings are case-folded and sorted to depend on the end-user’s locale. If you’re sorting strings, for example, use string<? or string-ci<? if the sort result should be consistent across machines and users, but use string-locale<? or string-locale-ci<? if the sort is purely to order strings for an end user.

Examples:
> (string<? "apple" "Banana")
#f
> (string-ci<? "apple" "Banana")
#t
> (string-upcase "Straße")
"STRASSE"

> (parameterize ([current-locale "C"])
(string-locale-upcase "Straße"))

"STRAßE"

For working with plain ASCII, working with raw bytes, or encoding/decoding Unicode strings as bytes, use byte strings.

Strings in Reference: PLT Scheme provides more on strings and string procedures.

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