In computer programming, a string is a sequence of characters. It is a data type that represents textual data, such as words, sentences, or even symbols. In most programming languages, strings are typically enclosed in quotation marks (either single or double) to distinguish them from other types of data.
Strings can contain letters, numbers, symbols, and whitespace characters. They are widely used in programming for various purposes, including storing and manipulating textual data, displaying messages and prompts to users, reading and writing text files, and representing user input.
Here are a few examples of strings:
- “Hello, World!”: A simple string that represents a greeting.
- “Lingoport”: A string that represents the name of a company.
- “12345”: A string that represents a numeric value, but treated as text instead of a mathematical entity.
- “Programming is fun!”: A string that represents a statement or message.
Strings are often manipulated using various string operations, such as concatenation (combining two strings), substring extraction (extracting a portion of a string), searching for specific patterns or characters within a string, and replacing or modifying parts of a string.
In the context of the i18n process, strings play a crucial role as they need to be extracted, translated, and localized to adapt software or content for different languages and regions. Tools and techniques used in localization, like string extraction tools and translation management systems, work with strings to facilitate the localization workflow.