WORD$()

Description

Expression is broken down into 'words' at given delimiter, and function returns the specified nth word from the stringExpression.

If n is less than 1 or n is greater than the number of words in the Expression, then an empty string ("") is returned.

The "string delimiter" is optional and can be any character or string.

When delimiter is not specified, any combinations of characters with codes < 33, (including chr$(0), TAB character, CR, LF and space), used as delimiter. Obviously, space being natural choice.

But function behaves differently then explicitly passing space character as a delimiter - see hints.

Syntax

1. word$(stringExpression, n [, string delimiter])

Hints

If you do not know, how many words you have, you just keep cycling until you get "" (empty string) - see example.

If explicitly passing delimiter, the delimiter is returned in the case when there is nothing between the delimiters (empty field) - see example. It works for any delimiter - space, too.

If delimiter is not set, then any combinations of characters with codes < 33 used as delimiter,

AND:

• leading and trailing such characters are stripped from stringExpression
• several such characters count as one delimiter.

Even though its called "word$", WORD$() will extract numbers from a string, too! All that is required is that the expression the WORD$ function is working on is a stringExpression.

You can use more then one character as delimiter. For example, CR LF (chr$(13)+chr$(10)) will split lines in a text file, which was read into one big string.

Example

' These examples are meant to show the way to use word$.
' There are many other ways to accomplish the task they show.

' Using the default space character as a delimiter
    ch$ = "One Two Three Four Five"

    for i = 1 to 5
        print "Chapter ";
        print word$(ch$, i)
        print
    next i

    print

' Using comma as a delimiter
    ch$ = "1,2,3,4,5"

    for i = 1 to 5
        print "Chapter ";
        print word$(ch$, i, ",")
        print
    next i

    end

' Using the period (.) to extract sentences from a paragraph
    para$ ="Word$ is a powerful function. You will find you'll use it "; _
    "often in your programs. Word$ is often used to extract a particular "; _
    "field from a data file, where the field delimiter is used "; _
    "for the string delimiter."
    for i = 1 to 3
        print trim$(word$(para$, i, ".")); "."
        print
    next i
    end
' ''You may have to use other characters as delimiters if your
' sentences end in other punctuation marks''.

'Using word$ to parse string of unknown number of words
'also note detecting of empty field (nothing between delimiters)

  token$ = "*"
  parseMe$ = "this,is,,a,test"
  delim$=","
  idx = 0
  while token$<>""
    idx = idx + 1
    token$ = word$(parseMe$, idx, delim$)
    if token$ <> "" then
        if token$ = delim$ then
            print token$;
            print " (Actually this means we have empty field here)"
        else
            print token$
        end if
    end if
  wend

Useful Procedures

' Place a useful function or sub using this keyword here