Strings and Characters

Strings and Characters

In Java, char is a primitive type (a subtype of int, strangely). A char is written with single quotes, 'a', while a string is written with double quotes. Thus 'a' and "a" are of different types!. You can access individual characters in a String using charAt, and get the size with myString.length() (note that the "()" is required!).

Methods similar to those in Grace are available. Common ones include:

• myString.indexOf(pattern) returns the first occurrence of pattern in myString (as usual starting with 0). It returns -1 if pattern does not occur in myString.
• myString.substring(i,j) returns the string consisting of all the letters from subscript i up to (but not including!) j. Thus myString.substring(1,myString.length() returns the string consisting of all letters in myString except the one in slot 0.

Strings and Characters