Strings in Kotlin

• Strings are represented by String word.

• Strings are immutable. Elements of a string are characters that can be accessed by the indexing operation: s[i].

• Strings can be iterated over with a for-loop.

• You can concatenate strings using the + operator. This also works for concatenating strings with values of other types, as long as the first element in the expression is a string or character.

• You cannot perform a string concatenation operation if a first element in the expression is Number or Boolean.
  

val s = “Hello” + 1234
val s = “Hello” + 11.14
val s = “Hello” + ‘J’
val s =   ‘J’    + “Hello”
val s = “Hello” + true

val s = 1234   +  “Hello”    //Compile time error.
val s = 43.24  +  “Hello”    //Compile time error.
val s = true   +  “Hello”    //Compile time error.

• Note that in most cases using string template or raw strings is preferable to string concatenation.

String Literals

Kotlin has two types of string literals:

1. Escaped strings
2. Raw strings

Escaped String

• Escaped strings — They may have escaped characters in them. The escaped string is very much like a java string.

val s = “Hello World \n”

• Escaping is done in a conventional way, with a backslash.

Raw String

• Raw strings — Raw strings that contain newlines and arbitrary text.
• A raw string delimited by a triple quote (“ ” ”), contains no escaping and you can contain newlines and any other characters:

val text = """ This is a Example
       Look How concise it is
       That is the magic of kotlin
"""

• trimMargin() is a recommended way for indentation in a raw string.

val text = """
       | Tell me and I forgot.
       | Teach me and I remember.
       | Involve me and I learn.
       | (Benjamin Franklin)
    """.trimMargin()

• By default | is used as a margin prefix, but you can choose another character and pass it as a parameter, like trimMargin(">"). You can also use trimIndent().

• If you need to represent a literal $ character in a raw string (which doesn't support backslash escaping), you can use the following syntax:
  

val price = """
${'$'}9.99
"""

So, guys, that’s it for strings in kotlin. Feel free to let me know if I missed something.

Till then Keep Coding, Keep Loving. Catch you up in another article.

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