This section describes functions for converting between characters,
strings and integers. format
(see Formatting Strings) and
prin1-to-string
(see Output Functions) can also convert
Lisp objects into strings. read-from-string
(see Input Functions) can convert a string representation of a Lisp object
into an object. The functions string-to-multibyte
and
string-to-unibyte
convert the text representation of a string
(see Converting Text Representations).
See Documentation, for functions that produce textual descriptions
of text characters and general input events
(single-key-description
and text-char-description
). These
are used primarily for making help messages.
This function returns a string consisting of the printed base-ten representation of number. The returned value starts with a minus sign if the argument is negative.
(number-to-string 256) ⇒ "256"
(number-to-string -23) ⇒ "-23"
(number-to-string -23.5) ⇒ "-23.5"
int-to-string
is a semi-obsolete alias for this function.
See also the function format
in Formatting Strings.
This function returns the numeric value of the characters in
string. If base is non-nil
, it must be an integer
between 2 and 16 (inclusive), and integers are converted in that base.
If base is nil
, then base ten is used. Floating-point
conversion only works in base ten; we have not implemented other
radices for floating-point numbers, because that would be much more
work and does not seem useful.
The parsing skips spaces and tabs at the beginning of string, then reads as much of string as it can interpret as a number in the given base. (On some systems it ignores other whitespace at the beginning, not just spaces and tabs.) If string cannot be interpreted as a number, this function returns 0.
(string-to-number "256") ⇒ 256 (string-to-number "25 is a perfect square.") ⇒ 25 (string-to-number "X256") ⇒ 0 (string-to-number "-4.5") ⇒ -4.5 (string-to-number "1e5") ⇒ 100000.0
string-to-int
is an obsolete alias for this function.
This function returns a new string containing one character,
character. This function is semi-obsolete because the function
string
is more general. See Creating Strings.
This function returns the first character in string. This is
mostly identical to (aref string 0)
, except that it returns 0
if the string is empty. (The value is also 0 when the first character
of string is the null character, ASCII code 0.) This
function may be eliminated in the future if it does not seem useful
enough to retain.
Here are some other functions that can convert to or from a string:
concat
This function converts a vector or a list into a string. See Creating Strings.
vconcat
This function converts a string into a vector. See Functions for Vectors.
append
This function converts a string into a list. See Building Cons Cells and Lists.
byte-to-string
This function converts a byte of character data into a unibyte string. See Converting Text Representations.