Language > Data Types > String Operations

# String Operations

IDL supports several basic string operations, as described below:

Operation | Description
Concatenation | The Addition operator, “+”, can be used to concatenate strings together.
Formatting Data | The STRING function is used to format data into a string. The READS procedure can be used to read values from a string into IDL variables.
Case Folding | The STRLOWCASE function returns a copy of its string argument converted to lowercase. Similarly, the STRUPCASE function converts its argument to uppercase. See Case Folding.
White Space Removal | The STRCOMPRESS and STRTRIM functions can be used to eliminate unwanted white space (blanks or tabs) from their string arguments.
Length | The STRLEN function returns the length of its string argument. See Finding the Length of a String.
Substrings | The STRPOS, STRPUT, and STRMID routines locate, insert, and extract substrings from their string arguments. See Substrings.
Splitting and Joining Strings | The STRSPLIT function is used to break strings apart, and the STRJOIN function can be used to join them.
Comparing Strings | The STRCMP, STRMATCH, and STREGEX functions perform string comparisons. See Comparing Strings.