From f44047618f532e4353fd5fab806980421dd60745 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Alberto Romero <beto@voxfeed.com>
Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2016 20:01:11 -0600
Subject: [PATCH] Adds a new lesson Strings in Depth on the advanced section

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+---
+layout: page
+title: Strings
+category: basics
+order: 9
+lang: en
+---
+
+What are Strings in Elixir, Char lists, Graphemes and Codepoints.
+
+## Table of Contents
+
+- [Strings in Elixir](#strings-in-elixir)
+- [Char lists](#char-lists)
+- [Graphemes and Codepoints](#graphemes)
+- [String functions](#string-functions)
+  - [Length](#length)
+  - [Replace](#replace)
+  - [Duplicate](#duplicate)
+- [Exercises](#exercises)
+  - [Anagrams](#anagrams)
+
+## Strings in Elixir
+
+Elixir strings are nothing but a sequence of bytes. Let's look at an example:
+
+```elixir
+iex> string = <<104,101,108,108,111>>
+"hello"
+```
+
+>NOTE: Using << >> syntax we are saying to the compiler that the elements inside those symbols are bytes.
+
+## Char lists
+
+Internally, Elixir strings are represented with a sequence of bytes rather than an array of characters, and also has a char list type (characters list). Elixir strings are created with double quotes, while char lists are with single quotes.
+
+What's the difference between them? Each value from a char list is the ASCII value from the character. Let's dig in:
+
+```elixir
+iex> char_list = 'hello'
+'hello'
+
+iex> Enum.reduce(char_list, "", fn char, acc -> acc <> to_string(char) <> "," end)
+"104,101,108,108,111,"
+```
+
+When programming in Elixir, we are not usually using char lists but Strings. The char lists support is given because are required by some Erlang modules.
+
+## Graphemes and codepoints
+
+Codepoints are just simple Unicode characters, which may be represented by one or two bytes. For example, characters with a tilde or accents: `á, ñ, è`. Graphemes consists on multiple codepoints that look as a simple character.
+
+The String module already provides two methods to obtain them, `graphemes/1` and `codepoints/1`. Let's look at the example:
+
+```elixir
+iex> string = "\u0061\u0301"
+"á"
+
+iex> String.codepoints string
+["a", "́"]
+
+iex> String.graphemes string
+["á"]
+```
+
+## String functions
+
+Let's review some of the most important and useful function the String module has for us.
+
+##### `length/1`
+
+Returns the number of Graphemes in the string.
+
+```elixir
+iex> String.length "Hello"
+5
+```
+
+##### `replace/4`
+
+Returns a new string replacing a current pattern in the string for some new replacement string.
+
+```elixir
+iex> String.replace("Hello", "e", "a")
+"Hallo"
+```
+
+##### `duplicate/2`
+
+Returns a new string repeated n times.
+
+```elixir
+iex> String.duplicate "Oh my ", 3
+"Oh my Oh my Oh my "
+```
+
+##### `split/2`
+
+Returns an array of strings splitted by pattern
+
+```elixir
+iex> String.split("Hello World", " ")
+["Hello", "World"]
+```
+
+## Exercises
+
+Let's just get in action with two simple exercises to demostrate we are ready to go with Strings!
+
+### Anagrams
+
+A and B are considered anagrams if there's a way that rearranging A or B, we can make them equals. For example: 
+A = super
+B = perus 
+
+If we re-arrange the characters on String A, we can get the string B, and viceversa.
+
+So, what could be the way to check if two strings are Anagrams in Elixir?
+
+The easiest solution is to order the strings alphabetically and check if they are equals. Let's check the next example:
+
+```elixir
+defmodule Anagram do
+  def anagrams?(a, b) when is_binary(a) and is_binary(b) do
+  	sort_string(a) == sort_string(b)
+  end
+
+  def sort_string(string) do
+    string
+    |> String.downcase
+    |> String.graphemes
+    |> Enum.sort
+  end
+end
+```
+
+Let's first give a watch to `anagrams?/2`. We are checking whether the parameters we are receiving are binaries or not. That's the way we check if a parameter is a String in elixir.
+
+After it, we are just calling a function that orders the strings in alphabetically order, first doing the string downcase and then using `String.graphemes`, which returns an array with the Graphemes of the string. Pretty straight right?
+
+Let's check the output on iex:
+
+```elixir
+iex> Anagram.anagrams?("Hello", "ohell")
+true
+
+iex> Anagram.anagrams?("María", "íMara")
+true
+
+iex> Anagram.anagrams?(3, 5)
+** (FunctionClauseError) no function clause matching in Anagram.anagrams?/2
+    iex:2: Anagram.anagrams?(3, 5)
+```
+
+As you can see, the last call to `anagrams?` cause a FunctionClauseError. This error is telling us that there is not a function in our module that meets the pattern of receiving two non-binary arguments, and that's exactly what we want, to just receive two strings, and nothing more.