Format Kotlin String with multiple occurrences - string

I've got a String template looking like this:
val template = "Something %s something else %s. The first was %1$s, the second was %2$s"
works fine with Java. How do I use this reoccurring String values with Kotlin?
Looks like %1$s is not possible.
Compiler warning: unresolved reference: s

String literals in Kotlin are capable of string interpolation, and the dollar sign is the start of a string template expression. If you need the literal dollar sign in a string instead, you should escape it using a backslash: \$. So your template (which I assume you're passing to String.format) becomes:
val template = "Something %s something else %s. The first was %1\$s, the second was %2\$s"

As Alexander Udalov's answer say, $ can be used for String Templates.
Apart from use backslash to escape the char $, you also can use ${'$'} to escape it. This syntax will be more useful when you want to escape the $ in a raw string, where backslash escaping is not supported.
val template = "Something %s something else %s. The first was %1${'$'}s, the second was %2${'$'}s"

Related

How to put double quotes into Swift String

I am writing some codes that deals with string with double quote in Swift. Here is what I've done so far:
func someMethod {
let string = "String with \"Double Quotes\""
dealWithString(string)
}
func dealWithString(input: String) {
// I placed a breakpoint here.
}
When I run the codes the breakpoint stopped there as usual but when I input the following into the debugger:
print input
This is what I get:
(String) $R0 = "String with \"Double Quotes\""
I got this string with the backslashes. But if I tried to remove the backslashes from the source, it will give me compile error. Is there a workaround for this?
You are doing everything right. Backslash is used as an escape character to insert double quotes into Swift string precisely in the way that you use it.
The issue is the debugger. Rather than printing the actual value of the string, it prints the value as a string literal, i.e. enclosed in double quotes, with all special characters properly escaped escaped.
If you use print(input) in your code, you would see the string that you expect, i.e. with escape characters expanded and no double quotes around them.
Newer versions of Swift support an alternate delimiter syntax that lets you embed special characters without escaping. Add one or more # symbols before and after the opening and closing quotes, like so:
#"String with "Double Quotes""#
Be careful, though, because other common escapes require those extra # symbols, too.
#"This is not a newline: \n"#
#"This is a newline: \#n"#
You can read more about this at Extended String Delimiters at swift.org.
extension CustomStringConvertible {
var inspect: String {
if self is String {
return "\"\(self)\""
} else {
return self.description
}
}
}
let word = "Swift"
let s = "This is \(word.inspect)"

In Swift how to obtain the "invisible" escape characters in a string variable into another variable

In Swift I can create a String variable such as this:
let s = "Hello\nMy name is Jack!"
And if I use s, the output will be:
Hello
My name is Jack!
(because the \n is a linefeed)
But what if I want to programmatically obtain the raw characters in the s variable? As in if I want to actually do something like:
let sRaw = s.raw
I made the .raw up, but something like this. So that the literal value of sRaw would be:
Hello\nMy name is Jack!
and it would literally print the string, complete with literal "\n"
Thank you!
The newline is the "raw character" contained in the string.
How exactly you formed the string (in this case from a string literal with an escape sequence in source code) is not retained (it is only available in the source code, but not preserved in the resulting program). It would look exactly the same if you read it from a file, a database, the concatenation of multiple literals, a multi-line literal, a numeric escape sequence, etc.
If you want to print newline as \n you have to convert it back (by doing text replacement) -- but again, you don't know if the string was really created from such a literal.
You can do this with escaped characters such as \n:
let secondaryString = "really"
let s = "Hello\nMy name is \(secondaryString) Jack!"
let find = Character("\n")
let r = String(s.characters.split(find).joinWithSeparator(["\\","n"]))
print(r) // -> "Hello\nMy name is really Jack!"
However, once the string s is generated the \(secondaryString) has already been interpolated to "really" and there is no trace of it other than the replaced word. I suppose if you already know the interpolated string you could search for it and replace it with "\\(secondaryString)" to get the result you want. Otherwise it's gone.

Replace a char with double qoute

I am constructing json code syntax in a string. The format needs to be {"field":"somedata"} and so on. The problem is that I need to use a string and the code that I wrote is:
astring=astring + "{\"field\":\"somedata\"}"
The problem is that when I save the string as a textfile the backslashes is also saved and disqualifies this as json.
The I tried to use a diff char (a dog) as a replacement for \" and tried to replace the dog using:
res_str=res_str.stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString("🐶", withString: "\"")
But the backslash was included. And finally I tried to
res_str=res_str.stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString("🐶", withString: String(UnicodeScalar(34)))
But the backslash is included. In PHP for example I could have used single quote as outer string separator but that isn't allowed in Swift.
Any ideas?

Meaning of $ in a string?

I came along this
__date__ = "$Date: 2011/06$"
and found this in the docs
$$ is an escape; it is replaced with a single $.
$identifier names a substitution placeholder matching a mapping key of "identifier". By default, "identifier" must spell a Python identifier. The first non-identifier character after the $ character terminates this placeholder specification.
${identifier} is equivalent to $identifier. It is required when valid identifier characters follow the placeholder but are not part of the placeholder, such as "${noun}ification".
but I don't understand it.
Could someone explain in plain english what's the $ for and give some examples preferably?
To Python, those dollar signs mean nothing at all. Just like the 'D' or 'a' that follow, the dollar sign is merely a character in a string.
To your source-code control system, the dollar signs indicate a substitution command. When you check out a new copy of your source code, that string is replaced with the timestamp of the last committed change to the file.
Reference:
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.6/svn.advanced.props.special.keywords.html
http://www.badgertronics.com/writings/cvs/keywords.html
This has been used in the context of string replace. For ex, if you have scenario with a variable which takes different value in same string, you can use this as follows:
import string
mytext = "$dog is an animal"
replaceDogtoCat = {"dog":"cat"}
mytemplate = string.Template(mytext)
print mytemplate.substitute(replaceDogtoCat) #output: cat is an animal
replaceDogtoGoat = {"dog":"goat"}
print mytemplate.substitute(replaceDogtoGoat) #output: goat is an animal
$dog is a variable which would get replaced when substitute gets executed

What's the difference of strings within single or double quotes in groovy?

def a = "a string"
def b = 'another'
Is there any difference? Or just like javascript to let's input ' and " easier in strings?
Single quotes are a standard java String
Double quotes are a templatable String, which will either return a GString if it is templated, or else a standard Java String. For example:
println 'hi'.class.name // prints java.lang.String
println "hi".class.name // prints java.lang.String
def a = 'Freewind'
println "hi $a" // prints "hi Freewind"
println "hi $a".class.name // prints org.codehaus.groovy.runtime.GStringImpl
If you try templating with single quoted strings, it doesn't do anything, so:
println 'hi $a' // prints "hi $a"
Also, the link given by julx in their answer is worth reading (esp. the part about GStrings not being Strings about 2/3 of the way down.
My understanding is that double-quoted string may contain embedded references to variables and other expressions. For example: "Hello $name", "Hello ${some-expression-here}". In this case a GString will be instantiated instead of a regular String. On the other hand single-quoted strings do not support this syntax and always result in a plain String. More on the topic here:
http://docs.groovy-lang.org/latest/html/documentation/index.html#all-strings
I know this is a very old question, but I wanted to add a caveat.
While it is correct that single (or triple single) quotes prevent interpolation in groovy, if you pass a shell command a single quoted string, the shell will perform parameter substitution, if the variable is an environment variable. Local variables or params will yield a bad substitution.

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