$LISTFROMSTRING ($LFS)
Synopsis
$LISTFROMSTRING(string,delimiter) $LFS(string,delimiter)
Parameters
| string | An expression that resolves to a string to be converted into a Caché list. This string contains one or more elements, separated by a delimiter. The delimiter does not become part of the resulting Caché list. The string cannot contain the quoted string delimiter. |
| delimiter | Optional — The delimiter used to separate substrings (elements) in string. An expression that resolves to a string containing one or more characters. If no delimiter is specified, the default is the comma (,) character. The delimiter cannot contain the character used to delimit the quoted string. |
Description
$LISTFROMSTRING takes a quoted string containing delimited elements and returns a Caché list. 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. Lists are handled using the various $LIST functions.
Parameters
string
A string literal (enclosed in quotation marks), a numeric, or a variable or expression that evaluates to a string. This string can contain one or more substrings (elements), separated by a delimiter. The string data elements must not contain the delimiter character (or string), because the delimiter character is not included in the output list.
delimiter
A character (or string of characters) used to delimit substrings within the input string. It can be a numeric or string literal (enclosed in quotation marks), the name of a variable, or an expression that evaluates to a string.
Commonly, a delimiter is a designated character which is never used within string data, but is set aside solely for use as a delimiter separating substrings. A delimiter can also be a multi-character string, the individual characters of which can be used within string data.
If you specify no delimiter, the default delimiter is the comma (,) character. You cannot specify a null string ("") as a delimiter; attempting to do so results in a <STRINGSTACK> error.
Example
The following example takes a string of names which are separated by a blank space, and creates a list:
namestring="Deborah Noah Martha Bowie"
namelist=$LISTFROMSTRING(namestring," ")
PRINT "1st element: ",$LIST(namelist,1)
PRINT "2nd element: ",$LIST(namelist,2)
PRINT "3rd element: ",$LIST(namelist,3)
See Also
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$LIST function
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$LISTBUILD function
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$LISTDATA function
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$LISTFIND function
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$LISTGET function
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$LISTLENGTH function
-
$LISTNEXT function
-
$LISTSAME function
-
$LISTTOSTRING function
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$LISTVALID function
