Using Strings - Page 3

In the previous page, you separated our input by differentiating between the whole dollar and the cents based on the position of the decimal point. I have not explained how the separation actually works. I will do that and more on this page!

Let's now take a look at what each new line of code you pasted from the previous page does.

var decimalIndex:Number = inputString.indexOf('.');

The indexOf method takes in a particular character as its argument and returns the numerical position of where it is located in our string.

The indexOf method always returns a number. It returns the index position of the first occurrence of the character inputted or a -1 if the string does not contain the character at all. In the above line of code, the string in question is inputString, and our indexOf method checks to see where the decimal point, the . character, occurs in our string.

You can think of a string as a collection of individual characters each at a particular, numerical position:

The first and only occurrence of the decimal point occurs at index position 7. If you trace the decimalIndex variable, you will see the number 7 displayed as the output from the indexOf method.

Let's look at the next line of code:

var centString:String = inputString.substring(decimalIndex, decimalIndex+3);

In this line of code, we store the two characters after our decimal point into our centString variable. I am able to do this easily by using the subString method. The subString method takes the starting index position and the ending index position plus one of our string and returns the characters in between the starting and ending positions.

In the code above, the range of characters lies between decimalIndex and decimalIndex + 3. One way of looking at it would be to think of the subString function boxing in the characters it wants. That would also explain why have to increment your final character's index position by 1:

So, the data stored inside centString based on the subString operation will be .44.

var dollarString:String = inputString.substring(0, decimalIndex);

We now have our cent information parsed out of our string. The above line of code takes care of everything else. The dollarString variable stores all the characters between inputString's starting position, index position 0, and the ending position up to the decimal point, decimalIndex:

Phew. That was a lot of explanation for what looks like a simple task! Luckily, the next three lines are simple variable declarations:

var finalString:String = "$";

var count:Number = 0;

var tempString:String = "";

We are declaring three variables: two String objects and one Number object. Let's focus on the two String objects. If you look through the code, you will see that I declare a lot of String objects. It almost seems like an unnecessary amount. The reason I do that is, in Flash and several other OOP languages such as C# and Java, String objects are unchangeable aka immutable. Once I initialize a String object, I cannot change it by adding more characters to it. I have to work around that by declaring new String objects that contain the original string and an operator that performs any string manipulation that I wish to accomplish.

For example, I cannot do the following:

var firstName:String = "kirupa";

firstName + " says hello!";

trace(firstName);

My output would still be kirupa instead of "kirupa says hello." I can, instead do two things to accomplish the same goal:

// Thing 1

var phrase:String = firstName + " says hello!";

trace(phrase)

 

// Thing 2

firstName += " says hello!";

Both of the above approaches, which I cheekily call Thing 1 and 2, end up tracing "kirupa says hello!" You might be wondering why Thing 2 works, but remember the += operator is the short-hand version of writing firstName = firstName + " saysHello". Technically, I am simply overwriting the old variables contents with a copy of the old variable data along with the new data.

Ok, I think I have sidetracked a little too much. Anyway, hopefully you have an understanding of why I am being a bit redundant by using many variable names in my code. In the next page, I will explain the rest of the code and wrap up the tutorial!

Onwards to the next page!

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