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Feature
The StringUtils Module
Filling the Gaps in REALbasic's String Support
Issue: 5.1 (September/October 2006)
Author: Joe Strout
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 15,959
Starting Page Number: 29
RBD Number: 5112
Resource File(s): None
Related Web Link(s):
<http://www.verex.com/opensource/>
Known Limitations: None
Excerpt of article text...
REALbasic's string handling is, in some ways, quite sophisticated: it handles combinations of text encodings quite gracefully, for example, and does fancy lexicographic comparisons by default. But the actual string operations -- Left, Mid, and InStr for example -- are few, and rather crude. Many other development environments, such as Python, have a much larger toolkit of string functions right out of the box. How many experienced programmers have come to REALbasic, and found themselves asking, "Hey, where are all the string functions?"
Well, here they are! StringUtils is an extensive module of add-on string functions, all in the public domain and free for use in any project, commercial or otherwise. The module can be simply dropped into your projects, and whatever functions you use will be included in your built app; the rest will be stripped out by the linker. Some of the functions are quite complex; others are trivial, but make your code easier to read.
Overview
You can download the latest copy of the StringUtils module from <http://www.verex.com/opensource/>. It comes as a Zip file, which should unpack to a project (StringUtilsHarness.rbp) and an XML file (StringUtils.xml). The project is a test harness, which runs a number of unit tests on each and every function in the module. If all goes well, you won't see much when you run the project, except a message saying the unit tests have completed. But if any unit tests fail (which should only occur if you've been tinkering with the code!), then an error message will appear, and you can use the debugger to see what has failed.
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Article copyrighted by REALbasic Developer magazine. All rights reserved.
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