Beginning AppleScript®

B.5. Strings

This section summarizes properties, escape characters, and the ways to identify elements when you are working with strings.

B.5.1. String Class Properties

The following table provides the properties for the string class.

Property	Meaning
length	The number of characters in the string
quoted form	The string inside a pair of single quotes, with embedded single and double quotes preceded by a backslash character

B.5.2. Predefined String Properties

You can use the predefined properties shown in the following table when you work with strings. You can changes these values, but I don't recommend doing so.

Property	Value
return	return character
tab	A tab character
space	A space character
text item delimiters	Used to delimit text items in a string and to delimit items converted from a list into a string; set to the null string by default

B.5.3. Escape Characters

The following table summarizes the special escape characters you can use inside a string.

Escape character	Meaning
\r	end of line character
\n	line feed character, often also referred to as the newline character
\t	tab character
\"	double quote character
\\	backslash character

B.5.4. String Elements

You can reference string elements by using the following element specifiers. You can specify elements by number, by a range, or by every. Refer to the table earlier in the "Lists" section.

Element	Meaning
character	A single character
paragraph	A sequence of characters up to the end of the string, return, or linefeed character, whichever occurs first ...