String substring Function

The String function substring() is closely related to charAt(), startsWith() and endsWith(). It allows you to look for an instance of a particular substring within a given String.

Hardware Required

• Arduino Board

Circuit

There is no circuit for this example, though your board must be connected to your computer via USB and the serial monitor window of the Arduino Software (IDE) should be open.

Code

substring() with only one parameter looks for a given substring from the position given to the end of the string. It expects that the substring extends all the way to the end of the String. For example:

String stringOne = "Content-Type: text/html";
// substring(index) looks for the substring from the index position to the end:
if (stringOne.substring(19) == "html") {
}

is true, while

String stringOne = "Content-Type: text/html";
// substring(index) looks for the substring from the index position to the end:
if (stringOne.substring(19) == "htm") {
}

is not true, because there's an l after the htm in the String.

substring() with two parameters looks for a given substring from the first parameter to the second. For example:

String stringOne = "Content-Type: text/html";
// you can also look for a substring in the middle of a string:
if (stringOne.substring(14,18) == "text") {
}

This looks for the word text from positions 14 through 18 of the String.

Caution: make sure your index values are within the String's length or you'll get unpredictable results. This kind of error can be particularly hard to find with the second instance of substring() if the starting position is less than the String's length, but the ending position isn't.

See Also

• String object - Your Reference for String objects

• CharacterAnalysis - We use the operators that allow us to recognise the type of character we are dealing with.

• StringAdditionOperator - Add strings together in a variety of ways.

• StringAppendOperator - Use the += operator and the concat() method to append things to Strings

• StringCaseChanges - Change the case of a string.

• StringCharacters - Get/set the value of a specific character in a string.

• StringComparisonOperators - Get/set the value of a specific character in a string.

• StringConstructors - Initialize string objects.

• StringIndexOf - Look for the first/last instance of a character in a string.

• StringLength - Get the length of a string.

• StringLengthTrim - Get and trim the length of a string.

• StringReplace - Replace individual characters in a string.

• StringStartsWithEndsWith - Check which characters/substrings a given string starts or ends with.

• StringToInt - Allows you to convert a String to an integer number.

Last revision 2015/08/11 by SM