Strings

Double-quoted strings

Elixir strings live in double quotes and hold UTF-8 text. A string is a binary under the hood, but you can treat it as plain text for now:

greeting = "hello" IO.puts(greeting) # prints hello

Interpolation #{}

Interpolation drops any value into a string with the hash brace pair. The expression inside runs first, turns into text, and joins the surrounding words:

name = "Ada" IO.puts("Hello, #{name}") # prints Hello, Ada IO.puts("Next year: #{36 + 1}") # prints Next year: 37

Heredocs

Triple quoted heredocs span several lines without plus signs or escapes. The closing quotes set the indentation that gets stripped from every line:

text = """ hello world """ IO.puts(text) # prints two lines

hello

world

Handy String functions

The String module packs the everyday tools: trimming, casing, and measuring. Pipes keep chained calls flat and readable:

" hello " |> String.trim() |> String.upcase() # gives "HELLO" String.length("hello") # gives 5

Next: Atoms

Article author: Arthur Isaev