Inside Macintosh: Text /

Chapter 5 - Text Utilities

The Text Utilities provide you with an integrated collection of routines for performing a variety of operations on textual information, ranging from modifying the contents of a string, to sorting strings from different languages, to converting times, dates, and numbers from internal representations to formatted strings and back. These routines work in conjunction with QuickDraw text drawing routines to help you display and modify text in applications that are distributed to an international audience.

Many of the Text Utilities routines were previously located in other managers in the Macintosh system software. Several of these have been replaced with new versions that take a script code as a parameter and others have been renamed. The appendix "Renamed and Relocated Text Routines" in this book shows the original names and locations of all of the text-handling routines.

You need to read this chapter if you are working with text in your application. This includes basic operations such as accessing a string resource and comparing two strings for equality. If you have used Macintosh text-processing routines in the past, you need to review the material in this chapter to understand the new capabilities that have been added to many of the routines.

To understand the material in this chapter, you need to have a basic understanding of the Macintosh script management system. Read this chapter after reading "Introduction to Text on the Macintosh." For parts that describe international resources, read the appendix "International Resources" along with this chapter. For parts that describe text layout, read "QuickDraw Text" along with this chapter.

This chapter describes the resources and text strings with which the Text Utilities interact, and discusses how to use the Text Utilities to compare, sort, modify, and find breaks in text strings, and to convert and format date, time, and numeric strings.

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Chapter Contents

About the Text Utilities

The Text Utilities and the International Resources

Obtaining Resource Information

Pascal Strings and Text Strings

Using the Text Utilities

Defining Strings

Working With String Handles

Working With String Resources

Sorting Strings in Different Languages

Sorting Strings in the Same Language

Primary and Secondary Sorting Order

Expansion and Contraction of Characters

Ignorable Characters

Converting and Stripping Characters

Special Cases for Sorting

Variations in Sorting Behavior

Choosing a Comparison Routine

Testing Two Strings for Equality

Comparing Two Strings for Ordering

Modifying Text

Converting Characters and Stripping Marks in Strings

Fitting a String Into a Screen Area

Replacing a Portion of a String

Finding Word, Line, and Script Run Boundaries

Finding Word Boundaries

Finding Line Breaks

Finding Subscripts Within a Script Run

Working With Date and Time Strings

Converting Formatted Date and Time Strings Into Internal Numeric Representations

Date and Time Value Representations

Converting Standard Date and Time Values Into Strings

Working With Numeric Strings

Converting Between Integers and Numeric Strings

Using Number Format Specification Strings

Converting Number Format Specification Strings Into Internal Numeric Representations

Converting Between Floating-Point Numbers and Numeric Strings

Text Utilities Reference

Data Structures

Routines

Defining and Specifying Strings

Comparing Strings for Equality

Determining Sorting Order for Strings in Different Languages

Determining Sorting Order for Strings in the Same Language

Modifying Characters and Diacritical Marks

Truncating Strings

Searching for and Replacing Strings

Working With Word, Script, and Line Boundaries

Converting Date and Time Strings Into Numeric Representations

Converting Numeric Representations Into Date and Time Strings

Converting Long Date and Time Values Into Strings

Converting Between Integers and Strings

Using Number Format Specification Strings for International Number Formatting

Converting Between Strings and Floating-Point Numbers

Summary of Text Utilities

Pascal Summary

Constants

Data Types

Routines

C Summary

Constants

Types

Routines

Assembly-Language Summary

Trap Macros