String Function Calls

Introduction

This document describes functions that are used to convert and inspect strings. Note that these functions never change the string itself, they only return a new value.

Strings are surrounded by quotes. If the string contains a quote, it should be escaped by another quote. For example: 'this isn''t funny'.

For a great deep-dive look into string functions call, check out this video:

toLowerCase

Converts all characters in the string to lowercase.

Input Parameters

The input parameters are described in the table below:

Output

The output is described in the table below:

Example

If you use the following input:

toLowerCase('thisISmyString')

The output is the following:

'thisismystring'

toUpperCase

Converts all characters in the string to uppercase.

Input Parameters

The input parameters are described in the table below:

Output

The output is described in the table below:

Example

If you use the following input:

toUpperCase('thisISmyString')

The output is the following:

'THISISMYSTRING'

substring

Retrieves a substring of a string. Note that the first character of a string is located at position 0, and the last character is located at position length(string)-1.

Input Parameters

The input parameters are described in the table below:

Output

The output is described in the table below:

Example

If you use the following input:

substring('thisismystring', 6)

The output is the following:

'mystring'

If you use a third parameter to specify the desired length of the output:

substring('thisismystring', 6, 2)

The output is the following:

'my'

To prevent the value of the third parameter from getting out of range, you can set a limit to the third parameter, for instance, using the min and length functions:

substring('thisismystring', 0, min(length('thisismystring'), 20))

find

Finds the position of the first occurrence of the substring in the string.

Input Parameters

The input parameters are described in the table below:

Output

The output is described in the table below:

Example

If you use the following input:

find('thisismystring', 'my')

The output is:

6

Substring that doesn’t occur in the original string:

find('thisismystring', 'yourstring')

returns:

-1

Another example of an input is:

find('thisismystring', 'i', 5)

The output is:

11

findLast

Finds the position of the last occurrence of a substring in the original string.

Input Parameters

The input parameters are described in the table below:

Output

The output is described in the table below:

Example

If you use the following input:

findLast('thisismystring', 't')

The output is:

9

Another example of an input where a substring does not occur in the original string:

findLast('thisismystring', 'yourstring')

The output is:

-1

An example of an input with the third parameter:

findLast('thisismystring', 'i', 5)

The output is:

4

As the optional parameter is 5, the string gets searched up to (and including) position 5, which means searching the substring 'thisis'. The last instance of 'i' in that substring is at position 4.

contains

Determines whether the original string (first parameter) contains a substring (second parameter).

For example, this expression:

contains('stringtosearchin', 'stringtosearchfor')

is equivalent to the following expression:

find('stringtosearchin', 'stringtosearchfor') != -1

The example below shows searching for an empty variable or empty string, where $param = '':

contains('stringtosearchin', $param)

The input above will return true.

Input Parameters

The input parameters are described in the table below:

Output

The output is described in the table below:

Example

If you use the following input:

contains('thisismystring', 'my')

The output is:

true

startsWith

Determines whether a string starts with the specified substring.

Input Parameters

The input parameters are described in the table below:

Output

The output is described in the table below:

Example

If you use the following input:

startsWith('thisismystring', 'this')

The output is:

true

endsWith

Determines whether a string ends with the specified substring.

Input Parameters

The input parameters are described in the table below:

Output

The output is described in the table below:

Example

If you use the following input:

endsWith('thisismystring', 'ring')

The output is:

true

trim

Removes all the whitespace at the beginning and end of a string.

Input Parameters

The input parameters are described in the table below:

Output

The output is described in the table below:

Example

If you use the following input:

trim(' this is my string     ')

The output is:

'this is my string'

If the input string is empty, it returns an empty string. So, if you use the following input and MyString in the input is empty:

trim($MyString)

The output is:

''

isMatch

Checks to see if a string matches a given regular expression.

Input Parameters

The input parameters are described in the table below:

Output

The output is described in the table below:

Example

This input below tests to see whether the string contains only numbers:

isMatch('234hello6432', '([0-9]+)')

The output is:

False

In isMatch(), the regex is implicitly anchored at ^ and $. This means that isMatch() will always match the entire input string instead of a substring.

Other Examples

• isMatch('NLG 123.45', '[0-9]') returns false
• isMatch('NLG 123.45', '.*[0-9].*') returns true

NB searching an empty string:

• isMatch('', '.*[0-9].*') returns false

replaceAll

Replaces all occurrences of a regular expression with another string.

Input Parameters

The input parameters are described in the table below:

Output

The output is described in the table below:

Example

If you use the following input:

replaceAll('this is a string with 75 some numbers 234 thrown in', '([0-9])', 'NUMBER')

The output is:

'this is a string with NUMBERNUMBER some numbers NUMBERNUMBERNUMBER thrown in'

Another example of an input of the following:

replaceAll('this is a string with no numbers thrown in', '([0-9])', 'NUMBER')

And the output is that there are no matches for the input:

'this is a string with no numbers thrown in'

replaceFirst

Replaces the first occurrence of the regular expression with a replacement string.

Input Parameters

The input parameters are described in the table below:

Output

The output is described in the table below:

Example

If you use the following input:

replaceFirst('this is a string with 75 some numbers 234 thrown in', '([0-9])', 'NUMBER')

The output is:

'this is a string with NUMBER5 some numbers 234 thrown in'

String Concatenation ( + )

The + operator can be used to concatenate two strings or a string and a number.

Input Parameters

The input parameters are described in the table below:

Output

The output is described in the table below:

Example

An example of an input to combine two strings can be the following:

'foo' + 'bar'

The output is:

'foobar'

An example of an input to combine a string and a number can be the following:

4.73 + ' kilometers'

The output is:

'4.73 kilometers'

urlEncode

Converts a string to be used in a URL. This function is useful when you want to use the string as part of the URL.

For example:

'http://google.com/search?q=' + urlEncode($myQuery)

Input Parameters

The input parameters are described in the table below:

Output

The output is described in the table below:

Example

If you use the following input:

urlEncode('Hello, world!')

The output is:

'Hello%2C+world%21'

urlDecode

Converts a string back from a URL. The opposite of urlEncode.

Input Parameters

The input parameters are described in the table below:

Output

The output is described in the table below:

Example

If you use the following input:

urlDecode('Hello%2C+world%21')

The output is:

'Hello, world!'