Converting Data to a String

OOo Basic contains functions that convert other data types to a string. Although the Format function is the most versatile method of converting a number to a string, that level of control is typically not required. The Str function converts a string to a number with no localization, and the Val function converts it back to a number.

The Hex and Oct functions convert a Long to its corresponding hexadecimal or octal notation. The leading "&H" and "&O" are not included. To convert back to a number, these strings must be manually prepended to the string.

The CStr function is able to intelligently convert almost any data type to a string in a locale-specific way (see Table 7 ). The Str function is limited to numbers and does not perform a locale-specific conversion.

Table 7: Converting data types with CStr.

Type	Converted to String
Boolean	True or False
Date	Formatted date string such as 06/08/2003
Null, uninitialized object	Run-time error
Empty, uninitialized variant	Zero-length string
any numeric value	Number as a string

The CStr function is useful when you need to explicitly convert a value to a string to avoid incorrect default conversions to other types. For example, the first operand to the addition operator determines if the result is a string or a number. This is also an argument against the use of the addition operator (+) for string concatenation rather than the operator specifically designed for string concatenation (&).

 Print 3 + "4"        '7 Print CStr(3) + "4"  '34 

The Join function concatenates all of the elements in a one-dimensional array into a single string. If no delimiter is specified, a space separates each element.

 Print Join(Array(3, 4, 5))       '3 4 5 Print Join(Array(3, 4, 5), "X")  '3X4X5 

The Split function is used to split a string into pieces based on an optional delimiter. This is essentially the opposite of the Join function and is the fastest method to parse a string into a series of substrings based on a delimiter.

 Split("3 4 5")      'returns the array (3, 4, 5) Split("3X4X5", "X") 'returns the array (3, 4, 5)