Scripting 3.4. String variables

Just as you can store numeric variables, you can store string variables, which contain text instead of numbers. Here is an example:

`word1$ = “Hello”
` `word2$ = “world”
` `sentence$ = word1$ + “ ” + word2$
` `writeInfoLine: “The whole sentence is: ”, sentence$
`

Yes, this is another way to get the sentence `Hello world` into the Info window. It's a more linguistically valid way to do it, and here is how it works:

  1. In line 1, the value “Hello”, which is a text (as we can see by its use of quotes), is stored into the variable `word1$`, which is a string variable (as we can see because its name ends in a dollar sign).
  2. In line 2, the text value “world” is stored into the string variable `word2$`.
  3. In line 3, we have the formula `word1$ + “ ” + word2$`, which contains two variables, namely `word1$` and `word2$`.
  4. The values of the two variables are “Hello” and “world”, respectively, so what the formula actually says is “Hello” + “ ” + “world”.
  5. The pluses in the formula mean “concatenate”, so we concatenate the three strings “Hello”, “ ”, and “world”, giving the longer string “Hello world”.
  6. Still in line 3, the string value “Hello world” is assigned to the string variable `sentence$`.
  7. Line 4 reports in the Info window: `The whole sentence is: Hello world`

### Links to this page

- Scripting
- Scripting 3. Simple language elements
- Scripting 5.1. Variables