Next: Data Containers, Previous: Numeric Data Types, Up: Top
A string constant consists of a sequence of characters enclosed in either double-quote or single-quote marks. For example, both of the following expressions
"parrot" 'parrot'
represent the string whose contents are `parrot'. Strings in Octave can be of any length.
Since the single-quote mark is also used for the transpose operator (see Arithmetic Ops) but double-quote marks have no other purpose in Octave, it is best to use double-quote marks to denote strings.
In double-quoted strings, the backslash character is used to introduce escape sequences that represent other characters. For example, `\n' embeds a newline character in a double-quoted string and `\"' embeds a double quote character.
In single-quoted strings, backslash is not a special character.
Here is an example showing the difference
toascii ("\n") => 10 toascii ('\n') => [ 92 110 ]
You may also insert a single quote character in a single-quoted string by using two single quote characters in succession. For example,
'I can''t escape' => I can't escape
Here is a table of all the escape sequences used in Octave. They are the same as those used in the C programming language.
\\
\"
\'
\0
\a
\b
\f
\n
\r
\t
\v
Strings may be concatenated using the notation for defining matrices. For example, the expression
[ "foo" , "bar" , "baz" ]
produces the string whose contents are `foobarbaz'. See Numeric Data Types, for more information about creating matrices.