Computation as an Expressive Medium

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Computation as an Expressive Medium

• Lab 6 Strings and Text Manipulation
• Jason Alderman

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the JAWS of a MIGHTY WHALE!

• Our good pal, Mr. String
• His amazing properties!
• Swell methods that make him ginchy!
• Text and fonts

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And now, hailing from Halifax

• You may recall when we talked about types
• Primitives
• int, float, byte
• boolean
• char
• Objects (composites)
• Array
• ArrayList
• PImage
• (any object you create)
• and

"OMGLOL this is teh awesomz0rz!!!!11!_at_!"
String
"Thank you! Thank you so much! I love you all!"
"No, really, you're far too kind."
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String details

• A string is almost like an array of chars
• char someletter 'b'
• String somewords "Howdy-do, mr. jones?"
• Note the use of double-quotes (vs. apostrophes)
• Like the objects we've created with classes, it
  has several methods, too

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String methods

• From http//processing.org/reference/String.html
• length()
• returns the size of the String (number of
  letters)
• charAt(number)
• returns the char at an index number
• toUpperCase() and toLowerCase()
• returns a copy of the String in UPPERCASE or
  lowercase respectively.
• substring(beginIndex, endIndex)
• returns a portion of the String from beginIndex

String howdy "Hello!" String
expletive howdy.substring(0,3)
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String concatenation

• Concatenation is just a fancy word for slapping
  together to making one!
• With Strings, this is done using the symbol
• So, if you have
• You'll get out

String s1 "She is the " String s2
"programmer." String sentence s1 "awesomest "
s2
println(sentence) // sentence "She is the
awesomest programmer." // outputs She is the
awesomest programmer.
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MORE String concatenation

• BUT WAIT! You can also add in numbers, too!
  Great Holy Scott Pilgrim!
• There is also a function called nf() which can
  format your numbers (it stands for number format)
• It has siblings! nfs() nfp() nfc() Consult
  the reference.

String anothersentence s1 "" 2 " "
s2// "She is the 2 programmer."
anothersentence s1 nf(7,3) " " s2//
nf( integer, number of digits )// "She is the
007 programmer." anothersentence s1
nf(3.14159,3,2) " " s2// nf( float, digits
before decimal, digits after decimal )// "She is
the 003.14 programmer."
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Strings and Arrays

• Did you know that you can take an Array of
  Strings and join it into one String?
• Did you also know that you can split a String
  into an Array?

String a "One", "string", "to", "rule",
"them", "all" String tolkien join(a, "
")// tolkien "One string to rule them all"
String b "Another string to bind
them" String tolkien2 split(b, " ")//
tolkien2 "Another", "string", "to", "bind",
"them"
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Special characters

• We talked about splitting strings based on spaces
  (" "), but remember we can also use tabs and new
  line characters (the carriage return)
• tab "\t"
• new line "\n"
• other escape characters include "\\" "\""

( \ tells the computer to look to the next
character to figure out what to do that's
special.)
String twolines "I am on one line.\n I am \ton
another."I am on one line.I am on another.
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Recap

• We've talked about Strings
• Methods and concatenation
• Strings and Arrays
• Fonts
• Reading from text files
• Let's look at cooooooode!

(No funny today, either. Sorry.)
eyebrow
eye
eye
mouth
short, puny arm
straight arm of medium length
long, spindly, twig-like body