$LISTFROMSTRING ($LFS) - Caché MultiValue Basic Reference

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Caché MultiValue Basic Reference

$LISTFROMSTRING ($LFS)

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Creates a list from a string.

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)