Library
Module
Module type
Parameter
Class
Class type
Strings.
A string s
of length n
is an indexable and immutable sequence of n
bytes. For historical reasons these bytes are referred to as characters.
The semantics of string functions is defined in terms of indices and positions. These are depicted and described as follows.
positions 0 1 2 3 4 n-1 n +---+---+---+---+ +-----+ indices | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | ... | n-1 | +---+---+---+---+ +-----+
i
of s
is an integer in the range [0
;n-1
]. It represents the i
th byte (character) of s
which can be accessed using the constant time string indexing operator s.[i]
.i
of s
is an integer in the range [0
;n
]. It represents either the point at the beginning of the string, or the point between two indices, or the point at the end of the string. The i
th byte index is between position i
and i+1
.Two integers start
and len
are said to define a valid substring of s
if len >= 0
and start
, start+len
are positions of s
.
Unicode text. Strings being arbitrary sequences of bytes, they can hold any kind of textual encoding. However the recommended encoding for storing Unicode text in OCaml strings is UTF-8. This is the encoding used by Unicode escapes in string literals. For example the string "\u{1F42B}"
is the UTF-8 encoding of the Unicode character U+1F42B.
Past mutability. OCaml strings used to be modifiable in place, for instance via the String.set
and String.blit
functions. This use is nowadays only possible when the compiler is put in "unsafe-string" mode by giving the -unsafe-string
command-line option. This compatibility mode makes the types string
and bytes
(see Bytes.t
) interchangeable so that functions expecting byte sequences can also accept strings as arguments and modify them.
The distinction between bytes
and string
was introduced in OCaml 4.02, and the "unsafe-string" compatibility mode was the default until OCaml 4.05. Starting with 4.06, the compatibility mode is opt-in; we intend to remove the option in the future.
The labeled version of this module can be used as described in the StdLabels
module.
make n c
is a string of length n
with each index holding the character c
.
init n f
is a string of length n
with index i
holding the character f i
(called in increasing index order).
get s i
is the character at index i
in s
. This is the same as writing s.[i]
.
Note. The Stdlib.(^)
binary operator concatenates two strings.
concat sep ss
concatenates the list of strings ss
, inserting the separator string sep
between each.
compare s0 s1
sorts s0
and s1
in lexicographical order. compare
behaves like Stdlib.compare
on strings but may be more efficient.
contains_from s start c
is true
if and only if c
appears in s
after position start
.
rcontains_from s stop c
is true
if and only if c
appears in s
before position stop+1
.
contains s c
is String.contains_from
s 0 c
.
sub s pos len
is a string of length len
, containing the substring of s
that starts at position pos
and has length len
.
split_on_char sep s
is the list of all (possibly empty) substrings of s
that are delimited by the character sep
.
The function's result is specified by the following invariants:
sep
as a separator returns a string equal to the input (concat (make 1 sep)
(split_on_char sep s) = s
).sep
character.map f s
is the string resulting from applying f
to all the characters of s
in increasing order.
mapi f s
is like map
but the index of the character is also passed to f
.
trim s
is s
without leading and trailing whitespace. Whitespace characters are: ' '
, '\x0C'
(form feed), '\n'
, '\r'
, and '\t'
.
escaped s
is s
with special characters represented by escape sequences, following the lexical conventions of OCaml.
All characters outside the US-ASCII printable range [0x20;0x7E] are escaped, as well as backslash (0x2F) and double-quote (0x22).
The function Scanf.unescaped
is a left inverse of escaped
, i.e. Scanf.unescaped (escaped s) = s
for any string s
(unless escaped s
fails).
uppercase_ascii s
is s
with all lowercase letters translated to uppercase, using the US-ASCII character set.
lowercase_ascii s
is s
with all uppercase letters translated to lowercase, using the US-ASCII character set.
capitalize_ascii s
is s
with the first character set to uppercase, using the US-ASCII character set.
uncapitalize_ascii s
is s
with the first character set to lowercase, using the US-ASCII character set.
iter f s
applies function f
in turn to all the characters of s
. It is equivalent to f s.[0]; f s.[1]; ...; f s.[length s - 1]; ()
.
iteri
is like iter
, but the function is also given the corresponding character index.
index_from s i c
is the index of the first occurrence of c
in s
after position i
.
index_from_opt s i c
is the index of the first occurrence of c
in s
after position i
(if any).
rindex_from s i c
is the index of the last occurrence of c
in s
before position i+1
.
rindex_from_opt s i c
is the index of the last occurrence of c
in s
before position i+1
(if any).
index s c
is String.index_from
s 0 c
.
index_opt s c
is String.index_from_opt
s 0 c
.
rindex s c
is String.rindex_from
s (length s - 1) c
.
rindex_opt s c
is String.rindex_from_opt
s (length s - 1) c
.
to_seq s
is a sequence made of the string's characters in increasing order. In "unsafe-string"
mode, modifications of the string during iteration will be reflected in the iterator.
to_seqi s
is like to_seq
but also tuples the corresponding index.
create n
returns a fresh byte sequence of length n
. The sequence is uninitialized and contains arbitrary bytes.
set s n c
modifies byte sequence s
in place, replacing the byte at index n
with c
. You can also write s.[n] <- c
instead of set s n c
.
blit src src_pos dst dst_pos len
copies len
bytes from the string src
, starting at index src_pos
, to byte sequence dst
, starting at character number dst_pos
.
fill s pos len c
modifies byte sequence s
in place, replacing len
bytes by c
, starting at pos
.
Return a copy of the argument, with all lowercase letters translated to uppercase, including accented letters of the ISO Latin-1 (8859-1) character set.
Return a copy of the argument, with all uppercase letters translated to lowercase, including accented letters of the ISO Latin-1 (8859-1) character set.
Return a copy of the argument, with the first character set to uppercase, using the ISO Latin-1 (8859-1) character set..