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Module Stdlib.String

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 |
           +---+---+---+---+     +-----+
  • An index i of s is an integer in the range [0;n-1]. It represents the ith byte (character) of s which can be accessed using the constant time string indexing operator s.[i].
  • A position 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 ith 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.

Strings

type t = string

The type for strings.

val make : int -> char -> string

make n c is a string of length n with each index holding the character c.

val init : int -> (int -> char) -> string

init n f is a string of length n with index i holding the character f i (called in increasing index order).

  • since 4.02.0
val length : string -> int

length s is the length (number of bytes/characters) of s.

val get : string -> int -> char

get s i is the character at index i in s. This is the same as writing s.[i].

Concatenating

Note. The Stdlib.(^) binary operator concatenates two strings.

val concat : string -> string list -> string

concat sep ss concatenates the list of strings ss, inserting the separator string sep between each.

Predicates and comparisons

val equal : t -> t -> bool

equal s0 s1 is true if and only if s0 and s1 are character-wise equal.

  • since 4.03.0 (4.05.0 in StringLabels)
val compare : t -> t -> int

compare s0 s1 sorts s0 and s1 in lexicographical order. compare behaves like Stdlib.compare on strings but may be more efficient.

val contains_from : string -> int -> char -> bool

contains_from s start c is true if and only if c appears in s after position start.

val rcontains_from : string -> int -> char -> bool

rcontains_from s stop c is true if and only if c appears in s before position stop+1.

val contains : string -> char -> bool

contains s c is String.contains_from s 0 c.

Extracting substrings

val sub : string -> int -> int -> string

sub s pos len is a string of length len, containing the substring of s that starts at position pos and has length len.

val split_on_char : char -> string -> string list

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:

  • The list is not empty.
  • Concatenating its elements using sep as a separator returns a string equal to the input (concat (make 1 sep) (split_on_char sep s) = s).
  • No string in the result contains the sep character.
  • since 4.04.0 (4.05.0 in StringLabels)

Transforming

val map : (char -> char) -> string -> string

map f s is the string resulting from applying f to all the characters of s in increasing order.

  • since 4.00.0
val mapi : (int -> char -> char) -> string -> string

mapi f s is like map but the index of the character is also passed to f.

  • since 4.02.0
val trim : string -> string

trim s is s without leading and trailing whitespace. Whitespace characters are: ' ', '\x0C' (form feed), '\n', '\r', and '\t'.

  • since 4.00.0
val escaped : string -> string

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).

val uppercase_ascii : string -> string

uppercase_ascii s is s with all lowercase letters translated to uppercase, using the US-ASCII character set.

  • since 4.03.0 (4.05.0 in StringLabels)
val lowercase_ascii : string -> string

lowercase_ascii s is s with all uppercase letters translated to lowercase, using the US-ASCII character set.

  • since 4.03.0 (4.05.0 in StringLabels)
val capitalize_ascii : string -> string

capitalize_ascii s is s with the first character set to uppercase, using the US-ASCII character set.

  • since 4.03.0 (4.05.0 in StringLabels)
val uncapitalize_ascii : string -> string

uncapitalize_ascii s is s with the first character set to lowercase, using the US-ASCII character set.

  • since 4.03.0 (4.05.0 in StringLabels)

Traversing

val iter : (char -> unit) -> string -> unit

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]; ().

val iteri : (int -> char -> unit) -> string -> unit

iteri is like iter, but the function is also given the corresponding character index.

  • since 4.00.0

Searching

val index_from : string -> int -> char -> int

index_from s i c is the index of the first occurrence of c in s after position i.

  • raises Not_found

    if c does not occur in s after position i.

val index_from_opt : string -> int -> char -> int option

index_from_opt s i c is the index of the first occurrence of c in s after position i (if any).

  • since 4.05
val rindex_from : string -> int -> char -> int

rindex_from s i c is the index of the last occurrence of c in s before position i+1.

  • raises Not_found

    if c does not occur in s before position i+1.

val rindex_from_opt : string -> int -> char -> int option

rindex_from_opt s i c is the index of the last occurrence of c in s before position i+1 (if any).

  • since 4.05
val index : string -> char -> int

index s c is String.index_from s 0 c.

val index_opt : string -> char -> int option

index_opt s c is String.index_from_opt s 0 c.

  • since 4.05
val rindex : string -> char -> int

rindex s c is String.rindex_from s (length s - 1) c.

val rindex_opt : string -> char -> int option

rindex_opt s c is String.rindex_from_opt s (length s - 1) c.

  • since 4.05

Converting

val to_seq : t -> char Seq.t

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.

  • since 4.07
val to_seqi : t -> (int * char) Seq.t

to_seqi s is like to_seq but also tuples the corresponding index.

  • since 4.07
val of_seq : char Seq.t -> t

of_seq s is a string made of the sequence's characters.

  • since 4.07

Deprecated functions

val create : int -> bytes

create n returns a fresh byte sequence of length n. The sequence is uninitialized and contains arbitrary bytes.

val set : bytes -> int -> char -> unit

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.

val blit : string -> int -> bytes -> int -> int -> unit

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.

  • raises Invalid_argument

    if src_pos and len do not designate a valid range of src, or if dst_pos and len do not designate a valid range of dst.

val copy : string -> string

Return a copy of the given string.

  • deprecated

    Because strings are immutable, it doesn't make much sense to make identical copies of them.

val fill : bytes -> int -> int -> char -> unit

fill s pos len c modifies byte sequence s in place, replacing len bytes by c, starting at pos.

val uppercase : string -> string

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.

  • deprecated

    Functions operating on Latin-1 character set are deprecated.

val lowercase : string -> string

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.

  • deprecated

    Functions operating on Latin-1 character set are deprecated.

val capitalize : string -> string

Return a copy of the argument, with the first character set to uppercase, using the ISO Latin-1 (8859-1) character set..

  • deprecated

    Functions operating on Latin-1 character set are deprecated.

val uncapitalize : string -> string

Return a copy of the argument, with the first character set to lowercase, using the ISO Latin-1 (8859-1) character set.

  • deprecated

    Functions operating on Latin-1 character set are deprecated.

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