SIMSCRIPT II.5 Programming Language

Programming Language Concepts
ing characters in the string are used. Thus, substr.f(A,I,INF.C) refers to all remaining
characters in the string starting from the I th position.
2.21.3 Pattern Matching: MATCH.F(text, pattern, skip)
The function match.f(A,B,I) searches from left to right for the character pattern defined by
text variable B, within the text variable A, after skipping the first I characters of A. If the pattern
is matched, the location of the pattern string within A is returned. If no matching string is found,
zero is returned. Both A and B are unchanged. If either A or B is the null string, zero is returned.
For example, if NAME is the string "JOHN JOHNSON":
let I = match.f(NAME, "JOHN", 1)
will return 6, as the first character position is skipped in the search.
2.21.4 Length Function: LENGTH.F(text)
A text variable may represent a character string of any length, from zero to a maximum of 32,000
characters. The LENGTH.L function returns the length of the text variable or text expression given
as an argument. The length of a null or unassigned string is zero.
2.21.5 Case Conversion: UPPER.F(text) and LOWER.F(text)
These functions convert the alphabetic characters of the given text argument to upper case or lower
case, respectively. Other characters are not changed.
2.21.6 String Repetition: REPEAT.F(string,count)
This REPEAT.F function repeats string (a text variable) count times (where count is an integer),
returning a text variable. For example:
repeat.f ("CAMEL", 2)
returns the string "CAMELCAMEL".
2.21.7 Truncation and Expansion: FIXED.F(string,length)
This FIXED.F function expands a text string to length, where length is an integer, by truncating
or space-padding on the right. The new text string is returned. For example:
fixed.f("CAMEL", 3)
returns the string "CAM", while:
fixed.f("DOG", 5)
returns the string "DOG ".
73