CODEWITHSUNDEEP
stringclojurelisp
Coding Enthusiast
Coding Enthusiast

Reputation: 3933

Read-string doesn't output complete string clojure

I am fairly new to functional programming. I am learning clojure. I was trying out a few commands. Some of them work fine. I got this weird one below:

(read-string "1 2 3")
;;this ouputs
1

(read-string "[1 2 3]")
;;this ouputs
[1 2 3]

I am wondering why in the first one it doesn't output the complete string. but does output it in the second one. 1 2 3

Any reason for this?

In case you are wondering, i was doing this on command line. It shouldn't really matter.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 51

Answers (2)

gfredericks
gfredericks

Reputation: 1322

The meaning of "string" in the name read-string is meant to indicate that its argument is a string, not its return value. The point of it is to parse a single piece of clojure syntax from the given string, which it is doing in both of your examples. The string "1 2 3" contains three forms instead of just one. read-string always parses and returns a single form, so returning 1 is the expected behavior here.

Upvotes: 2

Leon Grapenthin
Leon Grapenthin

Reputation: 9266

None of your examples output a string.

As the docstring says: "Reads one object from the string s."

In the first case the object is 1, in the second case the object is [1 2 3].

To output a string the object needs to be a string, e. g. (read-string "\"1 2 3\"")

Upvotes: 5

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