Any way to split a string?

[rootVIII]

Does the string type have any built in Split() functionality?

[Astrotronic]

Hi Root,

Good question, splitting strings is not mentioned on the string doc…

It’s mentioned that strings are ‘literals’ (fixed values), so I think the path forward might involve working directly with arrays of chars.

[rootVIII]

I noticed some array functions transfer to string… which isn’t surprising. But I actually don’t see many string functions at all hmm

[le-8g7e (Lloyd Evans)]

I’ve added a snippet for one here. Won’t be 100% most optimal but probably not awful. You can use it like this:

SplitResult1 := "string,to,split".Split(",") # ["string", "to", "split"]
SplitResult2 := "123".Split("") # ["1", "2", "3"]

[LoPing]

Nice. I wrote a pretty full set of string functions but didn’t do “Split”. I need to look over them again and post them as snippets.

[rootVIII]

I had already written one as well (only tested with a few test-cases):

    SplitString(StVal: string, Delimiter: char): []string =
        var Words : []string = array{}
        var Word : string = ""
        var Val: string = StVal + "{Delimiter}"
        for (Index := 0..Val.Length):
            if (Val[Index] <> Delimiter):
                if (Letter := Val[Index]):
                    set Word += "{Letter}"
            else:
                if (Word.Length <> 0):
                    set Words = Words + array{Word}
                set Word = ""
        return Words

and call like this:

        # Test split string:
        var SText : string = "test, string,wow, commas"
        var Result : []string = SplitString(SText, ',')
        for (Item : Result):
            Print(Item)

This is fine and all, but there’s tons of built-in string methods that I really like to use in in most well known languages. Hopefully verse authors add this in the future.

It’s not that I can’t code it… It’s more that I would rather have trivial things like this added into the standard library.

But then again, I guess string handling isn’t necessarily that important for game Devs

[LoPing]

Do you trim spaces (i.e., is the fourth element of your resulting test array " commas" or “commas”)?

Probably not worth dealing with, since it’s for game development. It’s too easy getting sucked into system development when we need to focus on game development!

[rootVIII]

@LoPing

since it’s for game development. It’s too easy getting sucked into system development when we need to focus on game development!

Ah it keeps the spaces… good call should probably fix that. And it only splits on one ‘char’ and not a string of length >= 1. So maybe it’s not so good haha. But yeah I’m hoping they expand on there standard library and release a runtime soon.

EDIT: Actually keeping spaces there when splitting on a comma is the expected behavior for most similar functions… python for example:

$ python
Python 3.10.7 (tags/v3.10.7:6cc6b13, Sep  5 2022, 14:08:36) [MSC v.1933 64 bit (
AMD64)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> 'test, string,wow, commas'.split(',')
['test', ' string', 'wow', ' commas']

[LoPing]

If I was doing system development, I’d add an optional ‘bTrim’ parameter, but we are just making games, so it’s probably not worth it.

Also, a lot of languages have some kind of Map function so that you could apply Trim on the resulting array.