A string is a sequence of characters that has no value other than itself. It cannot be assigned to, and will always evaluate to itself. The maximum length of a string is system-dependent. On 32-bit platforms, it is 268,435,439 characters; on 64-bit platforms, it is 34,359,738,335 characters.

A string is written by enclosing any sequence of characters within a pair of double quote characters (" "). For example: "This is a string".

Strings may also be formed with the concatenation operator ``||'', or with the function cat.  See the help page for cat for more information.

Two successive double quotes that appear after the opening of a string are parsed as a single double quote.  Thus,  "abc""de" yields the string abc"de. Alternatively, a double quote can be written within a string by preceding it with a backslash, as in "abc\"de".

Two consecutive string constants, separated only by whitespace (spaces, tabs, or line breaks) are parsed as a single string, with the intervening double quotes and whitespace removed. Thus, "abc" "de" yields the same string as "abcde".

The type function understands the type string.

A symbol can be converted into a string by using convert(aSymbol, string). Likewise, a string can be converted into a symbol by using convert(aString, symbol). Alternatively, one can use convert(aString, name).

Strings are especially useful for messages, labels, and text.

A number of efficient string manipulation primitives are provided in the StringTools package.

Substrings or individual characters can be accessed through an indexed selection.