[FM Discuss] definition of string

[Janet Swisher]

On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 12:41 PM, Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org> wrote:
> adam hyde writes:
>
>> is it ok to say this :
>> "a string is a collection of characters like 'almond' or 'eiessj44ik' or
>> 'almond34' etc"
>
> Better "a sequence of characters", since order matters.  This
> distinguishes a string from something like a regex character class,
> where order doesn't matter.  For example, [rat], [tar], and [art]
> would be the same character class, but "rat", "tar", and "art"
> are three different strings.

And, depending on the context, you might want to include example
strings that contain punctuation characters. But then that raises the
question of whether the quotation marks are part of the string. Using
different font for example strings dodges that question.

--Janet