Strings

Like arrays, strings are a type and not objects. They are arrays of bytes, so can they be convenient for storing large quantities of small numbers or binary data, that might not be scanned by the Garbage Collector. Please note that unlike C, the size of the string is stored so you can easily put binary data into it without caring about the ending \000 character.

Neko strings are just byte buffers, they are then independent of any encoding. It then depends on the API you're using to manipulate them. You can either use the builtins which are manipulating bytes (then suitable for ISO) or the UTF8 API (in the standard library) which is manipulating UTF8 charcodes.

Literal strings can contain any character, including newlines and binary data. However, double quotes and backslashes need to be escaped. A backslash is used for escaping some special characters, here's a list of recognized escape sequences :

• \" : doublequote
• \\ : backslash
• \n : newline
• \r : carriage return
• \t : tab
• \xxx : xxx are three digits that represent a decimal binary code between 000 and 255

Strings can be created using the $smake builtin with a given size. Once allocated, a string can't be resized. The size of a string can be retrieved using the $ssize builtin :

s = $smake(16);
s = "hello";
$print( $ssize(s) ); // 5

Please note that assigning a constant string does not make a copy of it, so the constant content can be modified. Also, several same constant strings can be merged into the same string, so you might want to be careful about unexpected side effects when modifying a constant string. You might want to use a $scopy or the $ssub builtins (similar to array ones) :

s = $scopy("hello");
$print( $ssub(s,1,3) ); // "ell"

Access to strings bytes can be done using the $sget and $sset builtins. $sget returns an integer between 0 and 255 or null if outside the string's bounds. $sset write the given integer value converted to an unsigned integer and modulo 256 :

$s = $smake(1);
$sset(s,0,3684); // set byte 0 to 3624 mod 256
$print( $sget(s,0) ); // prints 40

You can copy big chunks of bytes from one string to another using the $sblit builtin. It returns the number of bytes copied or null if the copy failed :

s = "some string to blit from";
s2 = $smake(14);
$sblit(s2,0,s,5,14);
$print(s2); // "string to blit"

To find a substring of a string, you can use the $sfind builtin :

s = "some string to search";
$print($sfind(s,0,"to")); // 12
$print($sfind(s,20,"to")); // starting a byte 20 : null

Strings can contain a maximum of 2 ^ 29 - 1 characters, $smake will raise an exception if this is exceeded.