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ListToString

Creates a string from a list.

Synopsis

ListToString(list[,delimiter])

Parameters

list An expression that evaluates to a valid list. A Caché list must be created using ListBuild or ListFromString, or extracted from another list using List. The null string ("") is also treated as a valid list.
delimiter Optional — A delimiter used to separate substrings. Specify delimiter as a quoted string. If no delimiter is specified, the default is the comma (,) character.

Description

ListToString takes a Caché list and converts it to a string. In the resulting string, the elements of the list are separated by the delimiter.

A list represents data in an encoded format which does not use delimiter characters. Thus a list can contain all possible characters, and is ideally suited for bitstring data. ListToString converts this list to a string with delimited elements. It sets aside a specified character (or character string) to serve as a delimiter. These delimited elements can be handled using the Piece function.

Note:

The delimiter specified here must not occur in the source data. Caché makes no distinction between a character serving as a delimiter and the same character as a data character.

Parameters

list

A Caché list, which contains one or more elements. A list is created using ListBuild or ListFromString, or extracted from another list using List.

delimiter

A character (or string of characters) used to delimit substrings within the output string. It can be a numeric or string literal (enclosed in quotation marks), the name of a variable, or an expression that evaluates to a string.

Commonly, a delimiter is a designated character which is never used within string data, but is set aside solely for use as a delimiter separating substrings. A delimiter can also be a multi-character string, the individual characters of which can be used within string data.

If you specify no delimiter, the default delimiter is the comma (,) character. You can specify a null string ("") as a delimiter; in this case, substrings are concatenated with no delimiter. To specify a quote character as a delimiter, specify the quote character twice ("""") or use Char(34).

Examples

The following example creates a list of four elements, then converts it to a string with the elements delimited by the colon (:) character:

namelist=ListBuild("Deborah","Noah","Martha","Bowie")
PrintLn ListToString(namelist,":")

returns "Deborah:Noah:Martha:Bowie"

The following example creates a list of four elements, then converts it to a string with the elements delimited by the *sp* string:

namelist=ListBuild("Deborah","Noah","Martha","Bowie")
PrintLn ListToString(namelist,"*sp*")

returns "Deborah*sp*Noah*sp*Martha*sp*Bowie"

See Also

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