STRING CONCATENATE

STRING CONCATENATE

Let Subcommand

Concatenate one or more strings.

This command allows you to concatenate strings. Although this can also be done using the "^" and "&" characters, using the STRING CONCATENATE command may result in Dataplot code that is somewhat easier to use and read (particularly when many strings are being concatenated).

LET <sout> = STRING CONCATENATE <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 STRING S1 = file
LET STRING S2 = 99
LET STRING S3 = .dat
LET SOUT = STRING CONCATENATE S1 S2 S3

The name of the new string can be the same as one of the previously defined strings. For example,
LET FNAME = FILE
LET SINDEX = ^K
LET SEXT = .DAT
LET FNAME = STRING CONCATENATE FNAME SINDEX SEXT

All strings on the right hand side of the equal sign must be previously existing strings. That is, expressions are not allowed. For example, instead of
LET FNAME = STRING CONCATENATE FNAME ".txt"

you need to do

LET STRING SEXT = .txt
LET FNAME = STRING CONCATENATE FNAME SEXT

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

CONCATENATE CHARACTER (&)	= Concatenate two strings.
SUBSTITUTE CHARACTER (^)	= Substitute the value of a string or parameter.
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.
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 REPLACE	= Insert a string into another string with 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

11/2008

 
LET STRING S1 = file
LET STRING S2 = 23
LET STRING S3 = .txt
LET SOUT = STRING CONCATENATE S1 S2 S3
    

The resulting string SOUT will contain
file23.txt

 
.  Assume we have variables X and Y in the files "file1.dat" to
.  "file10.dat" and we want to plot each of these in turn.
.
LET STRING SBASE = file
LET STRING SEXT = xx
TITLE CASE ASIS
LOOP FOR K = 1 1 10
    LET STRING SINDEX = ^K
    LET FNAME = STRING CONCATENATE SBASE SINDEX SEXT
    READ ^FNAME  Y X
    TITLE Data from File ^SOUT
    PLOT Y X
    DELETE Y X
END OF LOOP