comparison doc/lispref/strings.texi @ 100027:0f0810c1d1d1

(String Basics): Add an @xref to "Character Codes".

100026:ce90a3ecf576

@node String Basics
@section String and Character Basics

  Characters are represented in Emacs Lisp as integers;
whether an integer is a character or not is determined only by how it is
used.  Thus, strings really contain integers.

  The length of a string (like any array) is fixed, and cannot be
altered once the string exists.  Strings in Lisp are @emph{not}
terminated by a distinguished character code.  (By contrast, strings in
C are terminated by a character with @acronym{ASCII} code 0.)

change individual characters in a string using the functions @code{aref}
and @code{aset} (@pxref{Array Functions}).

  There are two text representations for non-@acronym{ASCII} characters in
Emacs strings (and in buffers): unibyte and multibyte (@pxref{Text
Representations}).  An @acronym{ASCII} character always occupies one byte in a
string; in fact, when a string is all @acronym{ASCII}, there is no real
difference between the unibyte and multibyte representations.
For most Lisp programming, you don't need to be concerned with these two
representations.

  Sometimes key sequences are represented as strings.  When a string is
a key sequence, string elements in the range 128 to 255 represent meta
characters (which are large integers) rather than character
codes in the range 128 to 255.

100027:0f0810c1d1d1

@node String Basics
@section String and Character Basics

  Characters are represented in Emacs Lisp as integers;
whether an integer is a character or not is determined only by how it is
used.  Thus, strings really contain integers.  @xref{Character Codes},
for details about character representation in Emacs.

  The length of a string (like any array) is fixed, and cannot be
altered once the string exists.  Strings in Lisp are @emph{not}
terminated by a distinguished character code.  (By contrast, strings in
C are terminated by a character with @acronym{ASCII} code 0.)

change individual characters in a string using the functions @code{aref}
and @code{aset} (@pxref{Array Functions}).

  There are two text representations for non-@acronym{ASCII} characters in
Emacs strings (and in buffers): unibyte and multibyte (@pxref{Text
Representations}).  For most Lisp programming, you don't need to be
concerned with these two representations.

  Sometimes key sequences are represented as strings.  When a string is
a key sequence, string elements in the range 128 to 255 represent meta
characters (which are large integers) rather than character
codes in the range 128 to 255.