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A string literal In PhixFlow, a text expression is made up from a string of characters inside double quotes, along with escape characters to allow for special characters to be used. It evaluates to a fixed string (an actual human readable string).

This page describes the syntax for string literal expressions in PhixFlow.

All expressions in PhixFlow are written in the PhixFlow scripting language, //and every expression resolves to one of the following:

  • A regular expresion, following the POSIX style
  • A string literal expression

Regular expressions are used for text pattern-matching, whereas string literals can be used both to do literal character matching and provide output values. In simple terms, writing a string literal expression for a string valued field on a stream would result in a (that) string being output to the database, but a regular expression would have no meaning in this context.

Examples:

If you want the string abc"def.insert special characters, for example quotes and line breaks. It can also include variable elements so that data from streams or other PhixFlow objects can be inserted into the string. The expression must evaluate to a fixed string.

Examples

Required outputText Expression
Completed"Completed"
abc"def

Use single quotes if you want to embed a double quote (or visa versa)

...

'abc"def'

or prefix the quote with a backslash

...

...

"

...

abc\"def"

...

Note how this contrasts to the

...

Regular Expression case, where a double-backslash is used to escape special characters.

The account number ACC46242 failed

Generate a message including the current account number being processed, which is provided by _out.accountNumber:

"The account number " + _out.accountNumber + " failed"

This message

is finished.

"This message\n" +

"is finished."

 

See Also

Fixed StringPlain Text

Regular ExpressionExpressions