What is the most idiomatic way to convert a string to characters in Erlang?

Question

What is the most idiomatic way to convert this: "helloworld" to ["h","e","l","l","o","w","o","r","l","d"] in Erlang ?

Well, the string is already a list of characters. What you are asking for is a list of one character strings/lists. One would wonder why you would like to do it for? — Hynek -Pichi- Vychodil, Mar 13 '18 at 07:37

Hynek -Pichi- Vychodil · Accepted Answer · 2018-03-14T08:41:38.133

The string is a list of characters

1> [$h, $e, $l, $l, $o, $w, $o, $r, $l, $d].
"helloworld"

So if you ask

What is the most idiomatic way to convert a string to characters in Erlang?

The answer is none, it already is a list of characters, you don't have to convert it.

If you ask, how to apply some function to the characters of the string, for example how to subtract 32.

2> [ X - 32 || X <- "helloworld" ].
"HELLOWORLD"

Or if you ask how to get a list of one character strings

3> [[X] || X <- "helloworld"].
["h","e","l","l","o","w","o","r","l","d"]

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 13 '18 at 13:04

1

an alternative to list comprehension in this simple case is the map function from lists module:

String = "helloworld",
lists:map(fun(X) -> [X] end, String).

answered Mar 13 '18 at 13:04

Pascal

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Mar 13 '18 at 09:28

0

You can try with the code below:

1> [[X] || X <- "helloworld"].
["h","e","l","l","o","w","o","r","l","d"]

edited Mar 13 '18 at 09:28

answered Mar 13 '18 at 06:31

Pouriya

3 Answers3