Comparison of programming languages (strings)

Concatenation

Different languages use different symbols for the concatenation operator. Most languages use the "+" symbol, though several deviate from this norm.

Common variants

Operator	Languages
+	BASIC, C++, C#, Pascal, Delphi, Eiffel, JavaScript, Java, Python, Turing, Ruby, Windows PowerShell, Objective-C, F#
++	Haskell
$+	mIRC Scripting Language
&	Ada, AppleScript, Curl, VHDL, Visual Basic, Excel
.	Perl (before version 6), PHP, and Maple (up to version 5), Autohotkey
~	Perl 6 and D
||	Icon, Standard SQL, PL/I, Rexx, and Maple (from version 6)
<>	Mathematica
..	Lua
,	J programming language, Smalltalk
^	OCaml, Standard ML, F#
//	Fortran

Unique variants

• Awk uses the empty string: two expressions adjacent to each other are concatenated. This is called juxtaposition. Unix shells have a similar syntax. Rexx uses this syntax for concatenation including an intervening space.
• C allows juxtaposition for string literals, however, for strings stored as character arrays, the strcat function must be used.
• MATLAB and Octave use the syntax "[x y]" to concatenate x and y.
• Visual Basic Versions 1 to 6 can also use the "+" sign but, this leads to ambiguity if a string representing a number and a number is added together.
• Microsoft Excel allows both "&" and the function "=CONCATENATE(X,Y)".

String literals

This section compares styles for declaring a string literal.

Quoted raw

Syntax	Language(s)
@"Hello, world!"	C#, F#
r"Hello, world!"	Python
'Hello, world!'	PHP, Perl, Windows PowerShell
<![CDATA[Hello, world!]]>	XML (CDATA section)

Quoted interpolated

Syntax	Language(s)
"Hello, $name!"	PHP, Perl, Windows PowerShell
"Hello, #{name}!"	Ruby

Escaped quotes

Syntax	Language(s)
"I said \"Hello, world!\""	C, C++, C#, F#, Java, Ocaml
"I said `"Hello, world!`""	Windows Powershell
"I said ^"Hello, world!^""	REBOL
"I said, %"Hello, World!%""	Eiffel

Dual quoting

Syntax	Language(s)
"I said ""Hello, world!"""	Visual Basic, Excel

Multiple quoting

Syntax	Language(s)
qq(I said "Hello, world!")	Perl
%Q(I said "Hello, world!")  %(I said "Hello, world!")	Ruby
{I said "Hello, world!"}	REBOL

Here document

Syntax	Language(s)
<<EOF I have a lot of things to say and so little time to say them EOF	Perl, PHP, Ruby
@" I have a lot of things to say and so little time to say them "@	Windows Powershell
"[ I have a lot of things to say and so little time to say them ]"	Eiffel

Unique quoting variants

Syntax	Variant name	Language(s)
"""Hello, world!"""	Triple quoting	Python
13HHello, world!	Hollerith notation	FORTRAN
(indented with whitespace)	Indented with whitespace and newlines	YAML