Representation

Documentation

In Elixir there are two types of "strings":

• double-quoted strings: "hello",

• single-quoted strings: 'hello'.

These are two different types and values. To prove that let's compare them:

iex> "hi" === 'hi'
false
iex> "hi" == 'hi'
false

By convention, in Elixir, double-quoted version is called string and single-quoted character list.

String literals similarities

You already know that string and character list are two different things. There are however some similarities:

• both are UTF-8 encoded binary,

• they may contain escape sequences (escape characters list),

• both allow interpolation.

Character list

How exactly is character list different from a string? On a low level, single-quoted strings are represented as a list of integers values, each value corresponding to a codepoint in the string. Here is a proof that we should treat it as a list:

iex> is_list 'hello'
true
iex> is_list "hello"
false

Furthermore, if IEx believes each number in the list is a printable character, it will print it as a character list:

iex> [104, 101, 108, 108, 111]
'hello'

If you want to operate on a string as a list, you should consider using the single-quoted version.

Sigils

You can declare both strings and char lists with sigils:

• strings

  iex> ~s(this is a string with "double" quotes, not 'single' ones)
  "this is a string with \"double\" quotes, not 'single' ones"
  

• char lists

  iex> ~c(this is a char list containing 'single quotes')
  'this is a char list containing \'single quotes\''
  

String operators

Interpolation

You can interpolate a value inside of a string with #{...}:

iex> min_age = 18
18
iex> current_age = 16
16
iex> "In #{18 - 16} years you will be an adult!"
"In 2 years you will be an adult!"

Concatenation

You can concatenate two string with <> operator:

iex> "Hello " <> "world"
"Hello world"