String

By Brandon Wu, May 2020

string is the SML type of ordered collections of characters.

Values

Any valid string literal is a value of type string. This means that examples such as "functional", "15-150", and "\n" are all valid strings, forming their own constant constructors that can thus be pattern matched upon.

fun courseToNum ("15-150" : string) : int = 15150
  | courseToNum ("15-151" : string) : int = 15151
  | courseToNum ("15-122" : string) : int = 15122

Production

Numerous types have their own toString functions that allow them to be easily converted to their string representations, including:

Bool.toString : bool -> string
Int.toString  : int -> string
Real.toString : real -> string

Combination

Strings can be combined by means of the ^ operator, or "concatenation". ^ takes two strings and joins them together, without creating any spaces. As such, if neither string contains spaces, then the resulting string will be attached directly. Specifically, the result of an operation such as "functional" ^ "programming" will be "functionalprogramming".

(op ^) : string * string -> string

From the Structure

The structure String is bound as part of the SML Basis. It contains several useful functions for dealing with strings, such as:

String.explode : string -> char list
String.implode : char list -> string

String.explode takes a string and converts it to a list of its constituent characters, in order as they appear in the string. String.implode is the opposite, taking in a list of characters and joining them to form a string. This means that:

val [#"1", #"5", #"1", #"5", #"0"] = String.explode "15150"
val "15150" = String.implode [#"1", #"5", #"1", #"5", #"0"]

Note that the use of # is to denote that each element of the list is a char type, as opposed to a string of length 1.