TestComplete: Working with Strings

This topic contains information about handling strings in VBScript and provides examples of operations that deal with strings. It contains the following sections:

Basics

Special characters

Getting the string length

Concatenating strings

Comparing strings

Accessing individual character of a string

Searching for characters and substrings

Getting a substring

Splitting strings

Removing extra spaces from a string

Replacing characters and substrings

Changing the letter case

Working with string lists

Basics

A String is a sequence of symbols or digits. Strings are among the most frequently used data types. Like any other data type, strings in TestComplete are represented as OLE-compatible variants. In VBScript, a sequence of literal characters, enclosed in double quotes ("), is recognized as a string. Single quotation marks (') are allowed within a string. To insert a double quotation mark into a string, it should be duplicated. The following is an example of string:

VBScript

str1 = "The brig was heading to Liverpool, when the captain noticed a ship."
str2 = "'Ahoy! Is there anyone?' - the captain cried."
str3 = """Nobody."" - was the answer."

To work with strings, TestComplete has a special scripting object - aqString. The object is available for all supported scripting languages, so you can use it to work with string values regardless of the chosen language.

Method, Property	Description
aqString.AddListItem	Adds a new item to a string list.
aqString.ChangeListItem	Changes the value of the string list item with the given index.
aqString.Compare	Compares two specified strings.
aqString.Concat	Concatenates two specified strings.
aqString.DeleteListItem	Removes an item with the given index from a string list.
aqString.Find	Searches for a substring within the given string. Use this method instead of the obsolete aqString.Contains.
aqString.Format	Generates a formatted string.
aqString.GetChar	Retrieves a single character from the input string.
aqString.GetLength	Returns the number of characters in a string.
aqString.GetListItem	Returns an individual item from the list passed through the input string.
aqString.GetListLength	Returns the number of items in the string list.
aqString.Insert	Inserts one string to another at the specified position.
aqString.ListSeparator	Specifies a character used to separate individual values in a list.
aqString.Quote	Encloses the specified string in quotes.
aqString.QuoteSymbol	Specifies a symbol used as a quotation mark.
aqString.Remove	Removes a number of characters from the input string.
aqString.Replace	Replaces all the occurrences of one substring with another substring.
aqString.SubString	Retrieves a substring from the input string.
aqString.ToLower	Converts the specified string to lower case.
aqString.ToUpper	Converts the specified string to upper case.
aqString.Trim	Removes spaces and control characters from the specified string.
aqString.Unquote	Converts a quoted string to an unquoted string.

Another scripting object that can be used to work with strings is aqConvert. This object has several methods that convert values of different types to a string and vice versa.

Method	Description
aqConvert.CurrencyToFormatStr	Converts a currency value to a string using the specified format settings.
aqConvert.CurrencyToStr	Converts a currency value to a string.
aqConvert.DateTimeToFormatStr	Converts the given date value to a string using the specified format.
aqConvert.DateTimeToStr	Converts the given date value to a string.
aqConvert.FloatToStr	Converts a floating-point value to a string.
aqConvert.IntToStr	Converts the given number into a string.
aqConvert.StrToCurrency	Converts the specified string to a currency value.
aqConvert.StrToDate	Converts the specified string to a date value.
aqConvert.StrToDateTime	Converts the specified string to a date/time value.
aqConvert.StrToFloat	Converts the specified string to a floating-point value.
aqConvert.StrToInt	Converts the specified string to an integer value.
aqConvert.StrToTime	Converts the specified string to a time value.
aqConvert.VarToStr	Converts the specified variant value to a string.

Furthermore, you can use native VBScript functions that operate with strings. A detailed description for these functions can be found at MSDN (the online version is available at http://msdn.microsoft.com). The table below only lists major functions:

Function	Description
Asc(string)	Returns the ASCII character code corresponding to the first letter in a string.
Chr(charcode)	Returns the character associated with the specified ANSI character code.
CStr(expression)	Returns an expression that has been converted to a variant of sub-type string.
Escape(charString)	Encodes a string so it only contains ASCII characters. Non-ASCII characters are replaced with %xx encoding, where xx is equivalent to the hexadecimal number representing the character.
InStr([startpos, ]string1, string2[, compare])	Returns the position of the first occurrence for one string within another.The search can start at a given position and use binary (compare=0) or text (compare=1) comparisons.
InStrRev(string1, string2[, start[, compare]])	Returns the position of an occurrence for one string within another, from the end of string. The search can start at a given position and use binary (compare=0) or text (compare=1) comparisons.
Join(list[, delimiter])	Returns a string created by joining a number of substrings contained in an array.
LCase(string)	Returns a string that has been converted to lowercase.
Left(string, length)	Returns a specified number of characters from the left side of a string.
Len(string | varname)	Returns the number of characters in a string or the number of bytes required to store a variable.
LTrim(string)	Returns a copy of a string without leading spaces.
Mid(string, start[, length])	Returns a specified number of characters from a string.
Replace(string, findstr, replacewith[, start[, count[, compare]]])	Returns a string in which a specified substring has been replaced with another substring a specified number of times.
Right(string, length)	Returns a specified number of characters from the right side of a string.
RTrim(string)	Returns a copy of a string without trailing spaces.
Space(number)	Returns a string consisting of the specified number of spaces.
Split(expression[, delimiter[, count[, compare]]])	Returns a zero-based, one-dimensional array containing a specified number of substrings.
StrComp(string1, string2[, compare])	Returns a value indicating the result of a string comparison.
String(number, character)	Returns a repeating character string of the length specified.
StrReverse(string)	Returns a string in which the character order of a specified string is reversed.
Trim(string)	Returns a copy of a string without leading and trailing spaces.
UCase(string)	Returns a string that has been converted to uppercase.
Unescape(charString)	Decodes a string encoded with the Escape function.

Special characters

In VBScript you can emulate any character by using the Chr function with the appropriate ASCII code. This also applies to special characters that are used to format string values. Alternatively, you can emulate control characters using native string constants. The table below lists the most frequently used special characters and their constants.

Description	Character sequence
Carriage return.	Chr(13) -- or -- vbCr
Line feed. On Unix platforms it is interpreted as new line.	Chr(10) -- or -- vbLf
A combination of carriage return and line feed. On Windows platforms it is interpreted as new line.	Chr(13)+Chr(10) -- or -- VbCrLf
New line. Either a line feed character or a combination of carriage return and line feed.	vbNewLine
Form feed.	Chr(12) -- or -- vbFormFeed
Horizontal tab.	Chr(9) -- or -- vbTab
Vertical tab.	Chr(11) -- or -- vbVerticalTab