Strings

Remarks#

Strings in D are immutable; use .dup to make a mutable char array if you want to edit in-place.

Reversing a string

string is defined as alias string = immutable(char)[];: so need to use dup to make a mutable char array, before it can be reversed:

import std.stdio;
import std.string;

int main() {

    string x = "Hello world!";
    char[] x_rev = x.dup.reverse;
    
    writeln(x_rev); // !dlrow olleH
    
    return 0;

}

Test for an empty or null string

Empty string

Empty string is not null but has zero length:

string emptyString = "";
// an empty string is not null...
assert(emptyString !is null);

// ... but it has zero lenght
assert(emptyString.length == 0);

Null string

string nullString = null;

a null string is null (De Lapalisse)

assert(nullString is null);

but, unlike C#, read the length of a null string does not generate error:

assert(nullString.length == 0);
assert(nullString.empty);

Test for empty or null


if (emptyOrNullString.length == 0) {
}

// or
if (emptyOrNullString.length) {
}

// or
import std.array;
if (emptyOrNullString.empty) {
}

Test for null

if (nullString is null) {
}

References

Convert string to ubyte[] and vice versa

String to immutable `ubyte[]`

string s = "unogatto";
immutable(ubyte[]) ustr = cast(immutable(ubyte)[])s;

assert(typeof(ustr).stringof == "immutable(ubyte[])");
assert(ustr.length == 8);
assert(ustr[0] == 0x75); //u
assert(ustr[1] == 0x6e); //n
assert(ustr[2] == 0x6f); //o
assert(ustr[3] == 0x67); //g
assert(ustr[7] == 0x6f); //o

String to `ubyte[]`

string s = "unogatto";
ubyte[] mustr = cast(ubyte[])s;

assert(typeof(mustr).stringof == "ubyte[]");

assert(mustr.length == 8);
assert(mustr[0] == 0x75);
assert(mustr[1] == 0x6e);
assert(mustr[2] == 0x6f);
assert(mustr[3] == 0x67);
assert(mustr[7] == 0x6f);

`ubyte[]` to string

ubyte[] stream = [ 0x75, 0x6e, 0x6f, 0x67];
string us  = cast(string)stream;
assert(us == "unog");

References

DLang forum