$Str
Treat a longstring as string
Note: Many $functions have been deprecated in favor of Object Oriented methods. There is no OO equivalent for the $Str function.
This function takes a longstring input and produces a string output, silently truncating the result at 255 bytes or shorter if the target is shorter.
The $Str function accepts one argument and returns a string result that is the first argument truncated at the $function target's length.
The first argument is an arbitrary string.
Syntax
%str = $Str(longstring)
%str is up to the first 255 bytes of longstring.
Usage notes
- The main utility of the $Str function is to prevent the request cancellation that would result from a direct assignment from a Longstring value to a String %variable that is too small to hold the entire value. While the input to $Str could be a regular String, this doesn't really make much sense since a regular String can be assigned to a regular String without request cancellation for truncation, anyway.
A $Str would upgrade an argument With expression to a Longstring With expression, but this is again rather silly as the result would then simply be truncated at 255 bytes if it exceeds 255 bytes.
- $Str also makes sense as a quick shorthand for the first 255 bytes of a Longstring, even if the target is a Longstring.