CML Reference Guide 4.7: Strings

CML Reference Guide

Chapter 4.7: String Manipulation

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$upper(words)

Converts all the text in words to upper case.

$upper1(words)

Converts the first letter of each word in words to upper case.

$lower(words)

Converts all the text in words to lower case.

$newline()

Evaluates to a newline character. Useful inside arguments to functions such as $t2hbr(), $ad_item(), etc.

$word(n str)

Evaluates to word number n of string str. Words are separated by one or more spaces. The first word is word number 1.

$rest(n str)

Evaluates to the "rest" of the words in a string, i.e. word number n through the end of str, inclusive.

$tablefind(word str)

Look for word in str. If it is identical to a single word, evaluate to the number of that word in str. Otherwise '0'.

$sizeof(str)

Evaluates to the number of words in string str.

$width(str)

Evaluates to the width (equivalent number of single-width characters) of str. Double-wide kanji have a width of 2.

$pad(num)

Evaluates to num blanks. Generally only useful inside <PRE> text.

$replace(a b c)

Each of the strings a and b must either be single characters, or else the (two or more digit) base-ten numeric representation of a single character. $replace() evaluates to string c, but with each instance of character a replaced by character b.

$asc2dec(text)

Converts text to a space-separated string of decimal numbers, representing the value of each character in text.

$str_index(what text)

Find the first occurrence of the (one-word) string what in string text. Evaluates to position number of what in text. (The first position is 0.) Evaluates to "-1" if not found.

$str_revdex(what text))

Find the last occurrence of the (one-word) string what in text. Evaluates to position number of what in text. (The first position is 0.) Evaluates to "-1" if not found.

$str_sub(pos len text)

Evaluates to a substring of text, starting at position pos, len characters long.

$epoch(date)

Date must be a date of form DD-MMM-YY[YY]. The function evaluates to its equivalent "epoch" time, i.e. the number of seconds since Jan 1, 1970. (See $time().)

$dateof(time)

Evaluates to the date form (DD-MMM-YYYY HH:MM) of an "epoch" time in seconds.

$quote(words)

Treats all of the words as a single word. (It evaluates to the string words, with all of the blanks replaced with a non-printable control character.) This function is useful in several different circumstances:

When comparing two multi-word strings, as in:
$equal ($quote (string1) $quote (string2))
To combine several words as one argument to the include directive, as in:
include file.i $(cnum) $quote(conference description)
To supply a multi-word string to a function that specifically expects a $quote'd string, such as $add_resp().

$unquote(words)

Undoes the effect of $quote() when explicitly necessary. I.e. $unquote ($quote (words)) evaluates to the original, unmodified words.

$charval(pos string)

Returns the decimal value of the pos'th character in string. The first character in string is at position 0. Positions beyond the end of the string return a character value of 0.