String Manipulation (GorillaStack)¶
| JEP: | xx |
|---|---|
| Author: | Chris Armstrong (GorillaStack) |
| Status: | draft |
| Created: | 31-10-2019 |
Abstract¶
This document proposes expanding the list of available string manipulation functions in the spec.
Motivation¶
The specification only contains basic string search and manipulation functions, such as starts_with() and contains(), which are insufficient for other use cases, such as replacing parts of strings, splitting strings, using regular expressions for searching or manipulation of strings, or other common string manipulations found in the common libraries of mainstream languages such as Python or JavaScript.
Specification¶
The following functions will be added to the specification:
split¶
array[string] split(string $subject, string $split_str, number $max = -1)
Given string $subject, split will split on occurrences string $split_str, up to and including $max times (if specified).
The result is an array containing each partial string between occurrences of $split_str. If the string contains no occurrences of $split_str, an array containing just the original $subject string will be returned.
$max is a optional parameter. When specified as an integer greater than zero, it will split the string up to ($max - 1) times, with the last string in the array containing the remaining contents of $subject unmodified.
If not specified or it is less than zero, the string will be split on every occurrence of $split_str.
When $max is equal to zero, it will behave as if the string is not split at all, and return an array containing one element, the original string.
| Expression | Result |
|---|---|
| split('average|-|min|-|max|-|mean|-|mode|-|median', '|-|') | ["average", "min", "max", "mean", "mode", "median"] |
| split('average|-|min|-|max|-|mean|-|mode|-|median', '|-|', 3) | ["average", "min", "max|-|mean|-|mode|-|median"] |
| split('average|-|min|-|max|-|mean|-|mode|-|median', '-') | ["average|", "|min|", "|max|", "|mean|", "|mode|", "|median"] |
| split('average|-|min|-|max|-|mean|-|mode|-|median', '|-|', 0) | ["average|-|min|-|max|-|mean|-|mode|-|median"] |
| split('every character', '') | ["e", "v", "e", "r", "y", " ", "c", "h", "a", "r", "a", "c", "t", "e", "r"] |
Impact¶
There should be no impact to existing users, as these are new functions.
