4 Strings and Characters

A string in Emacs Lisp is an array that contains an ordered sequence of characters. Strings are used as names of symbols, buffers, and files; to send messages to users; to hold text being copied between buffers; and for many other purposes. Because strings are so important, Emacs Lisp has many functions expressly for manipulating them. Emacs Lisp programs use strings more often than individual characters.

See Strings of Events, for special considerations for strings of keyboard character events.

• Basics		Basic properties of strings and characters.
• Predicates for Strings		Testing whether an object is a string or char.
• Creating Strings		Functions to allocate new strings.
• Modifying Strings		Altering the contents of an existing string.
• Text Comparison		Comparing characters or strings.
• String Conversion		Converting to and from characters and strings.
• Formatting Strings		format: Emacs’s analogue of printf.
• Custom Format Strings		Formatting custom format specifications.
• Case Conversion		Case conversion functions.
• Case Tables		Customizing case conversion.