Crystal Strings

Introduction to Crystal Strings

In Crystal, strings are a fundamental data structure that represents sequences of characters. Crystal strings are immutable, meaning once a string is created, it cannot be changed. This immutability is crucial for performance and safety. Crystal strings are encoded in UTF-8, allowing them to represent text from any language.

Creating Strings

Creating strings in Crystal is straightforward. You can define a string by enclosing text in double quotes.

String Interpolation

Crystal supports string interpolation, allowing you to embed expressions inside strings. To interpolate, use #{} within a string.

Common String Methods

Crystal provides a variety of methods to manipulate strings. Here are some commonly used ones:

• length: Returns the number of characters in the string.
• upcase: Converts all characters to uppercase.
• downcase: Converts all characters to lowercase.
• split: Splits a string into an array based on a delimiter.

String Immutability

As mentioned earlier, Crystal strings are immutable. This means that any operation on a string that seems to modify it will actually return a new string. For example, using upcase on a string does not change the original string but returns a new one.

Conclusion

Crystal strings offer a robust and efficient way to handle text in your programs. Their immutability and support for UTF-8 encoding make them a powerful tool for developers working with internationalized applications. Understanding and utilizing the available string methods can significantly streamline your text processing tasks in Crystal.