FortranStrings

FortranStrings.jl is a datatype for Fortran strings emulation. These strings have two main points:

• FortranString is mutable (but not resizable)
• flexibility in assignment: can truncate or fill the right side with spaces if the length is not coincide.

The original Fortran strings are composed of the 1-byte elements. To create such strings:

s = FortranString{UInt8}("ABC")

or, the same with the shorthand macro @F8_str:

s = F8"ABC"

It is also possible to create strings with Char elements, or any other: str = FortranString{Char}("ABC") (or str = F"ABC"), S = FortranString{UInt64}("ABC").

Assignment must be done element-wise with .=. Other element-wise operations (.) are supported also.

julia> s = F8"ABC"
F8"ABC"

julia> s .= "abc"
F8"abc"

julia> s .= "DE"
F8"DE "

julia> s .= "f" * "abc"
F8"fab"

julia> str = F"ABC"
F"ABC"

julia> str .+= 1
F"BCD"

julia> str[2:3] .= s[1:3]
2-element view(::FortranString{Char}, 2:3) with eltype Char:
 'f': ASCII/Unicode U+0066 (category Ll: Letter, lowercase)
 'a': ASCII/Unicode U+0061 (category Ll: Letter, lowercase)

julia> str
F"Bfa"

julia> @btime $s .= uppercase.($s)
  11.272 ns (0 allocations: 0 bytes)
F8"FAB"

Internally, the FortranString{T} is just a wrapper for Vector{T} with a bunch of broadcasting routines.

In Fortran strings, the quotes with which the strings were created must be escaped by doubling, for example Fortran's: 'Can''t be with only single quote inside' or "Should be ""doubled""". To simplify conversion from Fortran the escape flag qq or d has been introduced:

julia> str = F"Should be \"\"doubled\"\""d
F"Should be \"doubled\""

Similarly, using the q flag, single quotes should be doubled:

julia> s = F"Can''t be with only single quote inside"
F"Can't be with only single quote inside"

Although, in both cases, the escaping-doubling is not necessary when using the q or qq flags, because single ' or " produce single ones.

All this escaping only works when the FortranString is created from String, and this does not apply when a string is created from an Vector:

julia> FortranString{Char}([0x27, 0x27, 0x61, 0x62, 0x63, 0x27, 0x27])
F"''abc''"