STRING COMBINE

STRING COMBINE

Let Subcommand

Combine strings or create a string from a list of arguments.

The STRING CONCATENATE command is used to concatenate strings. The STRING COMBINE command is a variant of STRING CONCATENATE that varies in the following ways:
1. With STRING CONCATENATE, the arguments are previously defined strings. With STRING COMBINE, Dataplot first checks to see if the argument is the name of a previously defined string. If yes, the contents of the string are added to the contents of the output string (i.e., the same as STRING CONCATENATE). However if the argument is of any type other than string or it is not a previously defined name, the argument is added to the output string as literal text.

2. The STRING COMBINE inserts a space between the input strings/arguments. With STRING CONCATENATE, this has to be done manually (i.e., you need to define a string that contains a space and use this between the other arguments).

3. The STRING COMBINE command supports the TO syntax. That is, entering
   LET SOUT = STRING COMBINE X1 TO X8

   is equivalent to entering

   LET SOUT = STRING COMBINE X1 X2 X3 X4 X5 X6 X7 X8

This command has two primary uses:
1. As an alternative to STRING CONCATENATE when you want to automatically include a space between the input strings.

2. Most Dataplot analysis and graphics commands now support the TO syntax. However, there are cases, such as the LET command, where the TO syntax can be useful. The STRING COMBINE can be used to easily create a command string. This is demonstrated in the program example below.

LET <sout> = STRING COMBINE <s1> ... <sk>
where <sout> is the name of the resulting string;
and <s1> ... <sk> is a list of one or more previously defined strings.

LET STALL = STRING COMBINE X1 X2 X3
LET STALL = STRING COMBINE X1 TO X8

The name of the output string can be the same as one of the input strings. For example,
LET STRING S1 = One
LET STRING S2 = Two
LET STRING S3 = Three
LET SOUT = STRING COMBINE S1 S2 S3

By default, a space character is used as the separator character. To specify a different separator command, enter
SET STRING COMBINE SEPARATOR <char>

where <char> denotes the character to be used as the separator.

The total number of characters that DATAPLOT can use for storing functions and strings is set when DATAPLOT is built. The current default (11/2008) is 50,000 characters. Previous versions may set this limit at 1,000 or 10,000 characters. This limit applies to the combined number of characters for all functions and strings.

None

None

STRING CONCATENATE	=	Concatenate one or more strings.
NUMBER OF WORDS	=	Return the number of words in a string.
UPPER CASE	=	Convert a string to upper case.
LOWER CASE	=	Convert a string to lower case.
LET FUNCTION	=	Defines a function.
LET STRING	=	Defines a string.
READ STRING	=	Reads a string from a file.
SUBSTITUTE CHARACTER (^)	=	Substitute the value of a string or parameter.
CONCATENATE CHARACTER (&)	=	Concatenate two strings.
SUBTRING	=	Extract a substring from an existing string.
STRING INDEX	=	Extract the start/stop positions of a substring within a string.
STRING EDIT	=	Edit a string.
STRING MERGE	=	Insert a string into another string without overwrite.
STRING LENGTH	=	Return the length of a string.
CHARACTER	=	Convert numeric values to strings based on the ASCII collating sequence.
ICHAR	=	Convert a string to numeric values based on the ASCII collating sequence.
GROUP LABEL	=	Define the text for group labels.

Data Management

2018/02
2019/12: Added SET STRING COMBINE SEPARATOR

 
SKIP 25
READ BOXREACT.DAT Y X1 TO X5
LET STALL = STRING COMBINE X1 TO X5
LET CONFTAG1 CONFTAG2 = DEX CONFOUND ^STALL