How can I join a list of strings in specman?

Question

I have a list that I want to print:

foo: list of string;

I want to create a string bar that is the concatenation of the elements of foo. In Perl I would do:

$bar = join " ", @foo;

The only way I can think of to do this in specman is:

var bar: string = "";
for each in foo {
    bar = appendf("%s %s", bar, it);
};

This seems like it would have very poor performance, because it copies bar onto itself for each element in foo. Is there any better way to do this?

Answer 1

While writing the question I stumbled across the to_string() method. I can use:

var bar: string = foo.to_string();

This is the equivalent of Perl's:

$bar = join "\n", @foo;

If I want to use spaces I can use:

var bar: string = str_replace(foo.to_string(), "\n", " ");

Answer 2

There is also a dedicated function for this:

str_join(list: list of string, separator: string) : string

I'm sure help str_join will give you the details. There are also other useful functions like str_match, str_split which you may like.

As an additional hint, maybe you should print yourself the e Language Quick Reference, see http://www.cadence.com/Community/blogs/fv/archive/2009/06/19/send-us-suggestions-for-updating-the-e-specman-quick-reference-card.aspx.