Character Data Types

ViviFire supplies three character data types to do work on Unicode characters that make text. Char holds one character. String and SafeString can hold a large number of characters.

For how these and other data types compare, see Data Type Summary.

Char type

The data type Char is one four-byte Unicode (UTF-32) character. If you find it necessary to store only one character in a variable, declare it as follows:

Dim initial As Char

Each possible value in a variable of Char or String is a code point (or character code) in the Unicode character set. They can be in the range 0 thru 4,294,967,295 (%X00000000 thru %XFFFFFFFF). Unicode characters include the basic ASCII character set (0 thru 127), accented letters, different non-Latin scripts, and signs and symbols.

See Char Data Type for more information.

String type

The data type String is a sequence of zero or more Unicode (UTF-8) characters. If you find it necessary to store a large number of characters in a variable, declare it as follows:

Dim full_name As String

See String Data Type for more information.

SafeString type

The data type SafeString is almost the same as String, but with some limits. It lets you keep a separation between dangerous user-supplied text and safe text. If you find this safety necessary for a variable, declare it as follows:

Dim full_name As SafeString

See SafeString data type for more information.

See also