This function creates a new string from a variety of data types.
When only one argument is provided to the function, this argument is considered to be a value, which will be converted to a string from its original data type. When more than one argument is given, the first argument is considered a Format String and the arguments that follow it are considered the values to insert into the format string.
Values of type Real that are an integer will have no decimal places in the string. Values of type Real that have a fractional part will have two decimal places in the string. If you need more decimal places in the output string you can use the function string_format.
Values of type Struct or Instance will be converted to a string using that struct's or instance's toString() Method if one exists, or converted to a string implicitly.
Values of type Handle will be converted to a string that shows the handle info: "ref <type> <id>".
Values of type Array will be converted to a string of the format [element1, element2, element3, element4, element5], i.e. the concatenation of all elements in the array. If any of the elements in the array is a struct or an instance then its will be called to convert it to a string.
When you pass more than one argument to the string function, the first argument will be treated as a format string. In a format string you can use placeholders of the form "{0}", "{1}", "{2}", etc.
These placeholders will be replaced with the arguments at the positions they refer to, i.e. "{0}" will be replaced with the second argument, "{1}" will be replaced with the third argument, "{2}" will be replaced with the fourth argument, and so on.
string_variable = string("This is a string with two placeholders that will be replaced. They are {0} and {1}.", "this", "that");
// Results in:
// "This is a string with two placeholders that will be replaced. They are this and that."
If you only pass a single argument to the function, then this argument will not be considered a format string. If you add placeholders of the kind "{0}" in this case, then they will be output as normal text as there are no values to replace them with:
string_variable = string("This is a string with two placeholders that won't be replaced. They are {0} and {1}.");
// Results in:
// "This is a string with two placeholders that won't be replaced. They are {0} and {1}."
NOTE You can also use Template Strings to insert variables and expressions into strings.
string(value_or_format [, value1, value2, ...]);
| Argument | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| value_or_format | Any (if value) or String (if format) | The value to be turned into a string. |
| [, value1, value2, ...] | Any | OPTIONAL The values to be inserted at the placeholder positions. |
draw_text(100, 100, "Score: " + string(score) + " / Health: " + string(health));
The above code uses the string function to draw both real numbers and strings together, as draw_text() will only accept either a string or a real, but not both, so we convert the non-strings into strings.
draw_text(100, 100, string("Score: {0} / Health: {1}", score, health));
In this code the string function is used in a slightly different way to achieve the same result as in Example 1. Here the function is called with a format string as the first argument, in which "{0}" is replaced with the value of score and "{1}" is replaced with the value of health.