Data Type: STRING

The STRING data type is interpreted as Latin-1 or UTF-8: If the UTF-8 Encoding for STRING compile option is enabled, then all string literals are interpreted in UTF-8 format.

Declaration:

<variable name> : STRING( <size> ) := ' <text> ';

<variable name> : STRING[ <size> ] := ' <text> ';

The memory size <size> and initialization are optional.

sVar : STRING(46):= 'This is a string with memory for 46 characters.';
sVar_µ : STRING[10] := 'µ (Mü)';
sVar_ß : STRING[10] := 'Eszett';

A variable of data type STRING can contain any string. The amount of <size> memory which is reserved during a declaration refers to the number of bytes and is shown in parentheses or brackets. If a size is not defined, then 80 characters are reserved by default. If a variable is initialized with a literal which is too long for the data type, then the literal is truncated accordingly from the right.

The length of the strings is however not fundamentally limited. When you execute string manipulations with the functions of the Standard library, strings up to a length of 255 are processed correctly. When you execute string manipulations with the functions of the StringUtils library, you can also use longer strings (>255 characters).

When a variable of the data type STRING is reinitialized by resetting the application, the contents of the (old) string, which exist after the terminating null character of the initial value, are not overwritten. This applies both to initialization with the initialization value and to initialization with the default initialization value 0.

In compiler version 3.5.18.0 and higher, you can select the encoding format of strings. You have the possibility to specify project-wide whether strings are interpreted in Latin-1 format or UTF-8 format. For UTF-8 encoding, enable the UTF8 Encoding for STRING compile option.

For more information, see: Compile options and UTF-8 Encoding