Strings¶

Strings are used to store and manipulate text.

Strings are surrounded by single quotes ( ' ) or double quotes ( ‘ ).

escribir("hello")
escribir('hello')

Quotation marks can be used within a string, as long as they do not match the surrounding quotation marks.

escribir("His name is 'Melvin'")     //Returns: His name is 'Melvin'
escribir('His name is "Melvin"')     //Returns: His name is "Melvin"

Note

Latino has a library for managing strings, here.

Concatenate strings (texts)¶

To concatenate or join texts in Latino, double periods (..) are used , which unlike other programming languages which use the plus sign (+).

The double period (..) mark is not only useful to join texts, but also numbers.

x = "Hello World"
y = ", Latino"
escribir(x..y)     //Returns Hello World, Latino
escribir(1..2)     //Returns 12

Special characters¶

If strings are written in quotes, an error could occur with the following syntax:

escribir("Hello World, "Latino!" How are you?")

In the example above, the sentence would be cut to “Hello world,” and Latino would think the name Latino! is a variable, thus producing a syntax error.

The solution to this problem would be to use a backslash () .

The backslash () converts special characters to text:

/*
Returns:
Hello World, "Latino" How are you?
*/

escribir("Hello World, \"Latino!\" How are you?")

In addition to using the backslash to write texts, it is also used to indicate functions.

Below are the characters available for use in Latin.

Character table¶

Character	Description
\ ‘	Doubles quotes
\ '	Single quotes
\n	New line
\r	Carriage return
\b	Backspace
\t	Horizontal tab
\v	Vertical tab
\f	Form feed
\a	Beep
\0	Null character
\nnn	Character with octal value

Note

Special characters described in the table above were originally designed for typewriter, teletype, and fax.

Double quotation marks

/*
  Returns:
  Hello "world"
  */

  escribir("Hello \"world\"")

Single quotes

/*
Returns:
Hello 'world'
*/

escribir('Hello \'world\'')

New line¶

Character to use: \n

/*
Returns:
Hello
world
*/

escribir("Hello\nworld")

Carriage return¶

Character to use: \r

/*
Unlike \n, \r does not create a new line but returns the cursor to the starting point and continues typing. This makes an overwriting.

Returns:
Latinoundo,
*/

escribir("Hello World,\rLatino")

Note

To know the difference between \n and \r click here

Backspace¶

Character to use: \b

/*
This command removes the previous character.

Returns:
Holworld
*/

escribir("Hello\bworld")

Horizontal tab¶

Character to use: \t

/*
Returns:
Hello    world
*/

escribir("Hello\tworld")

Beep¶

Character to use: \a

/*
It will sound the PC Beep and returns:
Hello World
*/

escribir("Hello World\a")

Null character¶

Character to use: \0 *(zero)

/*
Delete all the text after the command until the closing of the quotation marks and returns:
Hello World Latino and happy new 2020
*/

year = "2020"
escribir("Hello World,\0 Latino! and happy new "..year)

Note

In the same way 0 being a null value, it can also be used in logical conditionals:

Example 1

/*
Returns:
The value is not null
*/

x = 5

si x != "\0"
  escribir ("The value is not null")
fin

Example 2

/*
Returns:
It is not null
*/

x = 5

si x == "\0"
  escribir ("It is null")
sino
  escribir ("It is not null")
fin

Character with octal value¶

Character to use: \nnn

/*
Returns:
Hello World
*/

text = "\110\157\154\141\040\155\165\156\144\157"
escribir(text)

Multiple line texts¶

We saw previously that strings can be linear texts, but they can also be multi-line texts.

To indicate when a string will be multi-line, just leave one of the quotation marks at the beginning and another at the end of the paragraph.

escribir("Sample multiple line text:
---------------------------------------
In this example we can observe
that Latino is perfectly capable of
process multi-line texts
as long as one of the two quotes
is at the beginning of the paragraph and another at the end")

Texts as arrays¶

As in many other programming languages, texts are arrays.

/*
Returns:
the letter "e"
*/

x = "Hello"
escribir(x[1])

Convert numbers to strings¶

In Latino there is a pre-defined function called acadena( ) that converts a number to a string (text).

x = 100
escribir(tipo(x))     //Returns decimal

x = acadena("100")
escribir(tipo(x))     //Returns string