Comparison of programming languages (strings)

Programming language comparisons
General comparison Basic syntax Basic instructions Arrays Associative arrays String operations String functions List comprehension Object-oriented programming Object-oriented constructors Database access Database RDBMS
Evaluation strategy List of "hello world" programs
ALGOL 58's influence on ALGOL 60 ALGOL 60: Comparisons with other languages Comparison of ALGOL 68 and C++ ALGOL 68: Comparisons with other languages Compatibility of C and C++ Comparison of Pascal and Borland Delphi Comparison of Object Pascal and C Comparison of Pascal and C Comparison of Java and C++ Comparison of C# and Java Comparison of C# and Visual Basic .NET

Concatenation

Different languages use different symbols for the concatenation operator. Most languages use the "+" symbol, though several deviate from this norm.

Common variants

Operator	Languages
+	ALGOL 68, BASIC, C++, C#, Pascal, Object Pascal, Eiffel, Go, JavaScript, Java, Python, Turing, Ruby, Windows PowerShell, Objective-C, F#
++	Haskell
$+	mIRC Scripting Language
&	Ada, AppleScript, Curl, VHDL, Visual Basic, Excel
.	Perl (before version 6), PHP, and Maple (up to version 5), Autohotkey
~	Perl 6 and D
||	Icon, Standard SQL, PL/I, Rexx, and Maple (from version 6)
<>	Mathematica
..	Lua
,	J programming language, Smalltalk
^	OCaml, Standard ML, F#, rc
//	Fortran

Unique variants

• Awk uses the empty string: two expressions adjacent to each other are concatenated. This is called juxtaposition. Unix shells have a similar syntax. Rexx uses this syntax for concatenation including an intervening space.
• C allows juxtaposition for string literals, however, for strings stored as character arrays, the strcat function must be used.
• MATLAB and Octave use the syntax "[x y]" to concatenate x and y.
• Visual Basic Versions 1 to 6 can also use the "+" sign but, this leads to ambiguity if a string representing a number and a number is added together.
• Microsoft Excel allows both "&" and the function "=CONCATENATE(X,Y)".

String literals

This section compares styles for declaring a string literal.

Quoted raw

Syntax	Language(s)
@"Hello, world!"	C#, F#
"Hello, world!"	Java, JavaScript
r"Hello, world!"	Python
'Hello, world!'	Pascal, Object Pascal, PHP, Perl, Windows PowerShell, JavaScript
<![CDATA[Hello, world!]]>	XML (CDATA section)
`Hello, world!`	Go, Smalltalk

Quoted interpolated

Syntax	Language(s)
"Hello, $name!"	PHP, Perl, Windows PowerShell
"Hello, #{name}!"	Ruby

Escaped quotes

Syntax	Language(s)
"I said \"Hello, world!\""	C, C++, C#, F#, Java, Ocaml, Python, JavaScript
"I said `"Hello, world!`""	Windows Powershell
"I said ^"Hello, world!^""	REBOL
"I said, %"Hello, World!%""	Eiffel

Dual quoting

Syntax	Language(s)
"I said ""Hello, world!"""	Ada, ALGOL 68, Excel, Fortran, Visual Basic, COBOL
'I said ''Hello, world!'''	Fortran, rc

Multiple quoting

Syntax	Language(s)
qq(I said "Hello, world!")	Perl
%Q(I said "Hello, world!")  %(I said "Hello, world!")	Ruby
{I said "Hello, world!"}	REBOL

Here document

Syntax	Language(s)
<<EOF I have a lot of things to say and so little time to say them EOF	Perl, PHP, Ruby
@" I have a lot of things to say and so little time to say them "@	Windows Powershell
"[ I have a lot of things to say and so little time to say them ]"	Eiffel

Unique quoting variants

Syntax	Variant name	Language(s)
′I said ′′Hello, world!′′.′	Double quoting	Smalltalk
'I said ''Hello, world!''.'	Double quoting	Pascal, Object Pascal, SQL standard
"""Hello, world!"""	Triple quoting	Python
13HHello, world!	Hollerith notation	Fortran 66
(indented with whitespace)	Indented with whitespace and newlines	YAML