The BirtStr class provides functions to manipulate strings, for example, to concatenate strings, trim extra spaces, get parts of a string, and display strings in lower or upper case. This class is static. The application cannot create instances of the class.
This function returns the length of a given string.
Syntax
Parameter
source
The string to evaluate.
Returns
The number of characters in the specified string.
Examples
The following example returns the length of a specific string:
The following example returns the length of each value in the CustomerName field:
This function returns the string that results from concatenating specified strings.
Syntax
Parameter
source1, ..., sourceN
The strings to concatenate.
Returns
The string that results from concatenating a series of strings.
Example
The following example returns a full address by concatenating values from multiple fields:
BirtStr.concat( row["AddressLine1"], ", ", row["AddressLine2"], ", ", row["City"], " ", row["PostalCode"], "row["State"], ", ", row["Country"] )
This function returns the position of a specified substring in a given string.
Syntax
Parameters
target
The substring to search for. The search is case-sensitive.
source
The string in which to look for a specified substring.
start
Optional. The position in the source string where the search starts. If you omit
this argument, the function starts the search from the first character of the string.
Returns
The numerical position of the substring in the string.
The first character of a string
starts at 0. If the substring is not found, the function returns -1.
Examples
The following example returns the numeric position of specified characters in specific strings:
The following example uses BirtStr.indexOf( ) in conjunction with BirtStr.left( ) to display the characters that precede the space character in a customer name. The BirtStr.left( ) function extracts a substring of a specified length, starting from the first character. In this example, the length of the substring to display is equal to the numerical position of the space character.
If the customer name is Julie Murphy, the expression returns Julie.
This function
extracts a substring of a specified length from a string, starting from
the left-most, or first, character.
Syntax
Parameters
source
The string from which to extract a substring.
n
The number of characters to extract, starting from the first character.
Returns
A substring of a specific length.
Examples
The following example returns substrings of various lengths from specific strings:
The following example uses BirtStr.indexOf( ) in conjunction with BirtStr.left( ) to display the characters that precede the space character in a customer name. The BirtStr.left( ) function extracts a substring of a specified length, starting from the first character. In this example, the length of the substring to display is equal to the numerical position of the space character.
If the customer name is Julie Murphy, the expression returns Julie.
This function
extracts a substring of a specified length from a string, starting from
the right-most, or last, character.
Syntax
Parameters
source
The string from which to extract a substring.
n
The number of characters to extract, starting from the last character.
Returns
A substring of a specific length.
Examples
The following example returns substrings of various lengths from specific strings:
The following example uses BirtStr.right( ) in conjunction with the BirtStr.indexOf( ) and BirtStr.charLength( ) functions to display the characters that appear after the space character in a customer name. This example assumes that the number of characters after the hyphen varies. Therefore, the length of the entire string (returned by BirtStr.charLength( )) minus the length up to the hyphen (returned by BirtStr.indexOf( )) is the number of characters to display.
If the customer name is Julie Murphy, the expression returns Murphy. If the customer name is Kwai Li, the expression returns Li.
This function returns the position of a specified substring in a given string
. The
substring can contain wildcard characters.
Syntax
Parameters
pattern
The string pattern to search for. The search is case-insensitive. You can use the following wildcard characters in a pattern:
|
n
|
An asterisk (
*
) matches zero or more characters, including spaces. For example, t*n matches tn, tin, and teen.
|
To match a literal asterisk or question mark in a string, precede those characters with two backslash characters (\\). For example, to find the substring R*10, use the following string pattern:
source
The string in which to look for a specified substring.
index
Optional. The position in the source string where the search starts. If you omit
this argument, the function starts the search from the first character of the string.
Returns
The numerical position of the substring in the string.
The first character of a string
starts at 0. If the substring is not found, the function returns -1.
Examples
The following example returns the numeric position of specified string patterns in specific strings:
The following example searches for the string pattern, S*A, in each value in the ProductCode field. If the product code is KBS5412A, the expression returns 2.
The following example uses BirtStr.search( ) in conjunction with BirtStr.left( ) to display the characters that precede the string pattern, -Model*, in a product name. The BirtStr.left( ) function extracts a substring of a specified length, starting from the first character. In this example, the length of the substring to display is equal to the numerical position of the string pattern.
If the product name is XMS-ModelA-1234, the expression returns XMS.
This function converts all letters in a string to lowercase.
Syntax
Parameter
source
The string to convert to lowercase.
Returns
The specified string in all lowercase letters
Example
The following example displays all the values in the productLine field in lowercase:
This function converts all letters in a string to uppercase.
Syntax
Parameter
source
The string to convert to uppercase.
Returns
The specified string in all uppercase letters
Example
The following example displays all the values in the customerName field in uppercase:
This function returns a string with all leading and trailing blank characters
removed. It does not remove blank characters between words.
Syntax
Parameter
source
The string from which to remove leading and trailing blank characters.
Returns
A string with all leading and trailing blank characters removed.
Example
The following example uses BirtStr.trim( ) to remove all leading and trailing blank characters from values in the FirstName and LastName data fields.
BirtStr.trim( row["FirstName"]) + " " + BirtStr.trim(row["LastName"] )
This function returns a string with all leading and trailing blank characters
removed. It does not remove blank characters between words.
Syntax
Parameter
source
The string from which to remove leading blank characters.
Returns
A string with all leading blank characters removed.
Example
The following example concatenates a literal string with each value in the customerName field. BirtStr.trimLeft( ) removes all blank characters preceding the customerName value so that there are no extra blank characters between the literal string and the customerName value.
This function returns a string with all trailing blank characters removed.
It does not remove blank characters between words.
Syntax
Parameter
source
The string from which to remove trailing blank characters.
Returns
A string with all trailing blank characters removed.
Example
The following example concatenates each value in the Comment field with a semicolon, then with a value in the Action field. BirtStr.trimRight( ) removes all blank characters after the Comment value so that there are no extra blank characters between the Comment string and the semicolon.
