Function List

Basic

Echo String

Simply repeat the input string to the output. This is the default function for new stages.

Link: Echo String

Clear String

Ignore the input string and output an empty string or replace it with the string entered as an argument.

Link: Clear String

Top and Tail

Add strings to the beginning and end of the input string.

Link: Add to the begining and end of a string

Trim

Remove characters from the beginning and end of the string.

Link: Trim String

Chop

Add characters at regular intervals in the string. Arguments: Size, the length of the interval after which the characters will be inserted; Offset, distance from the beginning of the string that the interval should measured; Chars, the character or sequence of characters to be inserted.

Link: Chop a string into fixed-length substrings

Reverse

Reverse the order of the characters in the string. If the string contains UTF-16 surrogate pair encoded characters the order of each pair will be reversed and the relationship lost. Reversing the string again will restore these characters.

Link: Reverse String

Normalise Spaces

Exchange all Unicode space characters with the traditional ASCII space character (U+0020). The current list of Unicode space characters that are affected by this function is: U+00A0, U+1680, U+180E, U+2002, U+2003, U+2004, U+2005, U+2006, U+2007, U+2008, U+2009, U+200A, U+200B, U+200C, U+200D, U+202F, U+205F, U+2060, U+2594, U+2800, U+3000, U+FEFF. This list may be expanded in future.

Strip Spaces

Remove all Unicode space characters listed in Normalise Spaces.

Link: Strip Spaces from String

Left Pad String

Increase the length of the string by adding characters to the beginning. Strings with length greater than or equal to the required length will be unchanged. Arguments: Pad Length, how long the string should be; Pad Char, characters to add to the left (if using multiple characters the complete set will be added repeatedly until the string is greater than or equal to the required length.

Link: Left Pad String

Right Pad String

As Left Pad String, but characters are added to the end of the string.

Link: Right Pad String

Limit to Left

Shorten the string to a given length by removing characters from the right.

Link: Limit String to Left

Limit to Right

Shorten the string to a given length by removing characters from the left.

Link: Limit String to Right

Rotate String

Cut characters from one end of the string and concatate them to the other.

Link: Rotate String

Count Characters

Outputs the number of characters in the string. UTF-16 surrogate pair encoded characters are counted as two characters.

Link: Count Characters in String

Comment

Insert a comment into the stack. The comment will be displayed in the stage output but will not alter the input string at all. Use this to describe your stack and how to use it. Multiple comments can be used in the stack.

Link: Stack Comment

Title

This will update the page title to the defined string. The title will be appeneded to the "String Thinger" name. It should be noted that the currently loaded page does not carry the encoded version of the stack in it's loaded URL so simply bookmarking this will not save the stack though the bookmark will carry the title. To save the encoded stack with the title will require clicking one of the link's below the stack. This is really intended to assist in sharing stacks.

Link: Stack Title

Replace

Replace All

Remove or replace all instances of a string with in the input string. This does not involve any regular expression syntax and matches will always be exact.

Link: Replace All

ReExp Replace

Remove or replace anything that matches the given regular expression. The Regular Expression should contain the beginning and ending slashes and the modifiers , eg '/\w+/g'. You can also use sub string capture with parentheses and use the capture in the replacement, as in a substitution expression, for instance: Find = '/(\w)(\w)/g' Replace = '$2$1' will swap each pair of adjacent word characters.

It should be noted that there are some issues for JavaScript regular expressions, some of them browser specific. At present JS RegExp should not be expected to support Unicode matching syntax such as '\p{L}'. In most browsers the period '.' will never match a newline '\n' as there is no 's' modifier (the 's' modifier is permitted by StringThinger but my generate an error in browsers that do not support it). In Firefox the class '[^]' (literally "not nothing") will match everything including '\n', but in IE it will throw an "Expected ']' in regular expression" error.

Link: RegExp Replace

Trade

This trades characters from one list found in the input string with those from the corresponding position in another, so any occurance of the sixth character in the first list will be traded for the sixth character in the second list in the output. If one list is longer than the other then the additional characters at the end of the longer list are ignored. The string is parsed character-by-character so 'ou' can be traded for 'uo' without unwanted recursion.

Link: Trade characters in string

Text

Some of these functions deal with character case, and it should be noted that support for case recognition and translation in languages other than those using ASCII is patchy if it is present at all.

UPPER CASE

Convert all lower case characters to upper case. This uses JavaScript's own String.toUppercase method.

Link: String to Upper Case

lower case

Convert upper case characters to lower case.

Link: String to Lower Case

Sentence case

Converts the first character and all occarances of /\bi\b/ in each sentence to upper case. This does not affect any other character cases.

Link: String to sentence case

Title Case

Convert the first character in each word to upper case. This does not affect the case of any other characters. This uses simple "Start Case" in which the first letters in all words will be converted to upper case, including articles, prepositions, and conjunctions.

Link: String to Title Case

iNVERT cASE

This reverses the case of each character in turn, upper to lower, lower to upper.

Link: Invert the case of a string

Disenvowel

Replace or remove all English vowels from the string. This is essencially RegExp Replace with the Find argument preset to '/[aeiou]/g'.

Link: Disenvowel a string

Gut Words

Replace or remove all but the first and last letters in each word. Similar to Disenvowel, this function is essentially RegExp Replace with the Find argument preset to '/\B\w\B/g'.

Link: Gut a string

Count Words

Return the number of units in the string separated by spaces.

Link: Count words in a string

HTML / XML

Strip HTML

Remove all HTML tags from the string, optionally replacing them with other characters. Arguments: Replace: the characters with which to replace each tag.

Link: Strip HTML tags from a string

Extract URLs

Return a list of identifiable URLs from the string, including those in HTML tag attributes. Arguments: Separator -

Link: Extract URLs from string

Quote HTML

Format a string containing HTML code returning entities in place of XML charcters (<>"'&). Arguments: Spaces per tab - the number of white space characters to replace each tab character with for pre-formatted display.

Link: Quote HTML

Balance HTML / XML

Process the string looking for unmatched tags using stack order. Unmatched opening tags will have a corresponding closing tag inserted before the closing tag of the parent element. Unmatched closing tags are deleted. Self-closing / empty tags are ignored. This does not check the validity of HTML tags name nor their permitted context. This also runs the Tidy XML Chars (IE) function prior to processing.

This function is integrated into the StringThinger root object and is used to handle formatted output.

Link: Balance HTML / XML

Render HTML

Insert the string into the page as rendered HTML. This is useful for formatting purposes, such as generating a layout with newlines (<br />). The input string is returned unchanged. StringThinger will automatically run the Balance HTML / XML function prior to display to prevent breaking the String Thinger page layout. For user security This process includes tests for images and inline or embedded scripts or css. The output will be blocked should any of these be detected.

To turn off this protection, disable the security measures at the bottom of the StringThinger page. Disabling these measures is not recommended if you did not generate the stack input yourself.

Link: Insert HTML into the page.

Entities

XML Entities

Relplace all occurances of the characters <, >, ", ' and & with the standard named XML entities <, >, ", ' and & respectively.

Link: Replace XML characters in string

XML Entities (IE)

Performs the same substitution as XML Entities, but then replaces each occurance of ' with ' for compatibility with Internet Explorer.

It should be noted that when the ' entity is inserted dynamically in IE using the Render HTML function the apostrophy appears to be rendered as intended. However, this behaviour is undocumented and it is recomended that it not be relied upon.

Link: Replace XML characters in string for Internet Explorer

Tidy XML Chars

Attempt to isolate instances of the XML characters <, >, &, ' and " that are not part of valid XML markup and translate them to named entities.

Link: Tidy loose XML characters

Tidy XML Chars (IE)

As Tidy XML Chars but uses ' in place of '.

Link: Tidy loose XML characters for Internet Explorer

All Numeric Entities

Converts all characters into decimal numeric entities.

Link: Convert a string to numeric entities

All Hex Entities

As with All Numeric Entities but the entities are defined using hexadecimal notation rather than decimal.

Link: Convert string to hexadecimal entities

Any Named Entities

Convert to named entities any characters for which there is a named entity is defined.

Link: Convert string to named html entities

Decode All Entities

Translate all numeric, hexadecimal and named HTML entities to the Unicode characters they represent.

Link: Convert all html entities in a string

Numbers

Change Base

Change the base of numbers in the string.

Link: Change the base of numbers

Decimal

these functions deal with the conversion of characters to and from their underlying character codes. In JavaScript these codes are expressed as 16bit Unicode code point values encoded using UTF-16. This means that characters outside of the BMP (Basic Multilingual Plain) will be expressed as a surrogate pairs (two 16bit values used to encode a single code point). For converting the characters to their actual Unicode code points in any plain see String to Codepoints in the Unicode section.

Decimal from String

Convert each character into its decimal character code values. This function uses JavaScript's Number.toString() method to perform the conversion.

Link: Convert string to decimal character values

String from Dec (auto)

Convert all decimal numbers to the characters represented by their values. This function uses any non-numeric character, or sub-string of such characters, as a value separator so 56seven89 will be treated as 56 and 89, which will be converted the characters 8Y. All other characters are discarded. As with Decimal from String this function uses UTF-16 thus all values are truncated to the least significant 16 bits prior to conversion. This function uses JavaScript's parseInt() function to parse the decimal values.

Link: Convert numeric values to characters

String from Dec (length)

As with String from Dec (auto) this converts decimal numbers in the string to the characters represented by their values. However, in this case all of the non-numeric characters are removed and the string of digits is split into fixed length sub strings. These sub strings are treated as decimal integers. This function simply performs the conversion and then feeds the result to String from Dec (auto) to generate the output so the features of that function also apply to this one.

Link: Convert decimal numbers to characters based on length

Decimal to Hex

Converts decimal values in the string to hexadecimal, treats each unbroken sequence of digits as a single number. This does not alter any other characters in the string. This function uses JavaScript's parseInt() function and Number.toString() method to perform the conversion.

Link: Convert decimal values to hexadecimal

Decimal to Bin

Converts decimal values in the string to binary, treats each unbroken sequence of digits as a single number. This does not alter any other characters in the string. This function uses JavaScript's Number.toString() method to perform the conversion.

Link: Convert decimal values in string to binary

Hexadecimal

Hex from String

Convert the string to a list of hexadecimal character values. This function uses JavaScript's Number.toString() method for the conversion of the character codes from decimal.

Link: Convert string to hexadecimal character codes

String from Hex (auto)

Convert hexadecimal values to the characters these values represent. The string is split on any sequence of non-hexadecimal characters. This means that the string heaven will be split into the hexadecimal values EA and 0E. This function uses JavaScript's parseInt() function to perform the conversion.

Link: Convert hexadecimal character codes to string

String from Hex (length)

Remove all non-hexadecimal characters and split the remainder into a given number of characters for each value. This function uses String From Hex (auto) so the features of that function also apply.

Link: Convert hexadecimal characters to characters codes

Hex to Decimal

Converts all hexadecimal values in a string to decimal. This will result in any ordinary words having the characters a, b, c, d, e and f replaced with digits. So red green blue will become r237 gr238n 11lu14. This function uses JavaScript's parseInt() function to perform the conversion.

Link: Convert Hexadecimal values to decimal

Hex to Binary

Convert hexadecimal values to binary. This treats any sequence of characters of the class [0-9A-Fa-f] as a single hex number regardless of context. Thus the string "Damn the expense!" will become "11011010mn th1110 1110xp1110ns1110!". This function uses JavaScript's parseInt() function and Number.toString() method to perform the conversion.

Link: Convert hexadecimal values to binary

Binary

Binary from String

Convert the characters in the string to a list of binary values. This function uses JavaScript's Number.toString() method to perform the conversion of character codes from decimal.

Link: Convert character codes to binary

String from Bin (auto)

Convert binary values to the characters represented by these values. This function used any sequence of non-binary characters ([^10]) as a delimiter. Since the characters are encoded in UTF-16 the binary values are masked to the least significant 16 bits. All non-binary characters are deleted. This function uses JavaScript's Number.toString() method to perform the conversion.

Link: Convert binary values to characters

String from Bin (length)

All non-binary characters are removed and the remaining binary characters are separated into fixed length binary numbers which are then converted to the characters represented by their values. This function uses String from Bin (auto) so the features of that function also apply here.

Link: Convert fixed length binary values to characters

Bin to Decimal

Convert binary numbers in the string to decimal. This treats any sequence of binary digits as a single number. This function uses JavaScript's parseInt() function to perform the conversion.

Link: Convert binary values in a string to decimal

Bin to Hex

Convert binary values in the string to hexadecimal. This treats any sequence of ones and zeros as a single number. This function uses JavaScript's parseInt() function and Number.toString() method to perform the conversion.

Link: Convert binary values to hexadecimal

Lists

All list functions operate on values separated by a known character or characters. Most commonly this will be a comma ',' which is the default value for most functions. Another common alternative is the a space character.

Sort Numeric

Sort list values numerically. This function operate on base36 values unless the Use Float option is selected in which case base10 will be used.

Link: Numeric Sort

Sort Alpha

Sort list values alphabetically. Values are treated as single case so Brave and brave will have to same sort priority.

Link: Sort values aplphabetically

Sort Length

Sort list values by length. To sort same-length values alphabetically or numerically add a Sort Alpha or Sort Numeric stage above.

Link: Sort list values by length

Unsort List

Randomise the positions of values in a list.

Link: Randomise a list

Chop to List

Create a list by chopping the string into fixed-length sub-strings.

Link: Chop a string into fixed length values

RE Matches to List

Use a Redular Exression to extract list values from a string. This funciton has two modes: without Match Separator checked the regular expression matches the values make up the list; with Match Separator checked the regular expression is used to replace the matches with the separator character. In the latter case perenthised sub matches from Find may be used in the Separator with $1..$9.

Link: Split a string to list values using a regular expression

Reverse List

Reverse the order of list values.

Link: Reverse a list of values

Rotate List

Shift the positions of the values left or right wrapping values shifted from one end to the other.

Link: Rotate list

Sub List

Split a list into sub-lists using a new separator character or characters.

Link: Chop a list into sub-lists

Map List

Add characters to the beginning and end of each value.

Link: Map characters to the beginning and end of list values

Enumerate List

Add numbering to the list values.

Link: Add numbering to a list

Index List

Organise values into groups based on Regular Expression matching and add headers for each group.

Link: Generate an index from a list of values

Unique Values

Remove duplicate values from a list. Duplicates must be exact character matches.

Link: Remove duplicate values from a list

Pop Values

Pop values from the right end of a list.

Link: Remove values from the end of a list

Shift Values

Shift values off the start of a list.

Link: Remove values from the start of a list

Left Pad Values

Append characters to the end of each value until it reaches the required length. Longer values are ignored.

Link: Left pad values in a list

Left Pad Values (auto)

Left pad each value to equal the length of the longest value in the list.

Link: Automatically left-pad list values

Right Pad Values

Prepend characters to the beginning of each value until it reaches the required length. Longer values remain unchanged.

Link: Right pad values in a list

Right Pad Values (auto)

Left pad each value to equal the length of the longest value in the list.

Link: Automatically right pad values in a list

Left Limit Values

Truncate each value in the list to a given length, removing characters from the right.

Link: Truncate values in a list

Right Limit Values

Truncate each value in the list to a given length, removing characters from the left.

Link: Shorten values in a list

Change Separator

An alias for Replace All.

JavaScript

escape

Apply the JavaScript function escape() to the string. This a depreciated escapeing function, superseded by encodeURI and encodeURIComponent. It's most notable features are that it will percent encode any non-alphanumeric characters with the exception of *-./@_+, and that it encodes characters with a Unicode code point greater than 0xFF using UTF-16 in the escape form %uXXXX. Thus the Euro symbol '€' will be encoded as '%u20AC' and the character '𧾷' which lies outside of the Basic Multilingual Plain will be encoded as the surrogate pair '%uD85F%uDFB7'.

Link: Apply JavaScript function escape()

unescape

Reverses the escape encoding.

Link: Apply JavaScript function unescape()

encodeURI

Apply the JavaScript function encodeURI to the string. This will not encode alphanumeric characters or the symbols ~!@#$&*()=:/,;?+'. Other characters are encoded in UTF-8 the bytes of which are then percent encoded. This function is intended to be used on complete, formatted URIs which may contain non-ASCII characters that will need to be escaped.

Link: Apply JavaScript function encodeURI

decodeURI

Decode a string encoded using encodeURI.

Link: Apply JavaScript function decodeURI

encodeURIComponent

Apply the JavaScript function encodeURIComponent() Like encodeURI encodes non-alphanumaeric characters with the exception of ~!*()' using percent encoded UTF-8 the bytes. This function is intended to be used on individual sections of a URI prior to formatting. Most likely this will be values in a query string that contain characters normally used in the formatted URI or non-ASCII characters. This can, for example, be used to encode a complete URI as a query string value in a URL.

Link: Apply JavaScript function emcodceURIComonent

decodeURIComponent

Decode a string encoded with encodeURIComponent.

Link: Apply JavaScript function decodeURIComponent

Unicode

String to UTF-8

Convert a string into UTF-8 bytes and return the characters whose codes corrispond to the byte values. Essentially this returns the mojibake typically seen when a UTF-8 encoded web page containing international characters indicates that it should be interpreted using ISO 8859-1.

While some of these characters are likely to be non-printable and do not appear in the visible output or are replaced with a �, the values are still available for processing by he next stage in the stack.

Link: Convert string to UTF-8

UTF-8 to String

Convert a string to UTF-8, assuming that any character with a code greater than 127 is part of a multi-byte sequence. This reverses the encoding performed by String to UTF-8.

While, in theory, this can convert mojibake to legible text, in practice the mojibake presented by browsers will not allow the copying and pasting of non-printable characters or characters that are not valid Unicode character codes (such as specials which may be replaced by �). This means that some bytes in a multi-bytes sequence will be lost during copying.

Link: Convert a string from UTF-8 mojibake to text

Shift UC Char Codes

Add a fixed value to the code of each character.

Link: Shift each character code

String to Codepoints

Convert a string to a list of the characters' Unicode code points in hexadecimal. In most cases these values will match the output of Hex from String save for characters outside of the Basic Multilingual plain whose surrogate pair codes will be converted to single Unicode values.

Link: Convert a string to a list of unicode Codepoints

Codepoints to String

The reverse of String to Codepoints, converting a list of hexadecimal values and converting them to the characters represented by these codes.

Link: Convert a list of unicode Codepoints to a string

Character Set to UC

Assume the bytes of the string are from a given character set and map them to their Unicode equivelents. This generally assumes some type of mojibake as input, however it does not follow that this will reverse the incorrect application of UTF-8 to an ISO-8859 encoded text since this may have interpreted some characters as incomplete byte sequences that will not render in most browsers. Since almost all character sets carry the alphanumerics of ASCII this conversion will have little or no effect on plain Latin text.

Link: Convert from character set to Unicode

UC to Character Set

Performs the reverse lookup of Character Set to UC, mapping Unicode characters to their codes in other character sets where applicable. Characters that have no mapping in the selected code page are left unchanged. Where the string contains non-ASCII characters this will produce mojibake since the string will be displayed in StringThinger's UTF-8 encoded page.

Link: Convert string from Unicode to another character set

Base64

Encode Base64

Encode the string in Base64. Since Base64 encoding requires 8bit values this function checks the string for any character with a code greater than 0x7F and, if found, will automatically convert the string to UTF-8 using the function String to UTF-8 prior to encoding.

Link: Encode a string using Base64

Encode Base64 (UTF-8)

This performs tha same function as Encode Base64 but skips the test for character codes greater than 0x7F. Instead, all character codes are truncated to the least significant 8 bits (code&255). This is useful for data that has already been encoded in some fasion that reduces the code values to less than 256.

Link: Base64 encode string of 8bit characters.

Decode Base64

This decodes the string using Base64. If the string does not match the profile of Base64 encoding (length devisible by 4, characters in defined range) the string will is returned unchanged. The character range definition must match that used during encoding.

Link: Decode Base64 encoded string

Decode Embedded B64

Search the string for sequences of characters matching the profile of a Base64 encoding and decode them in place. The codes are detected using the given character range and will be decoded only if their length is greater than 4 and are appropriately padded. Anything which does not match the profile is left unchanged.

Link: Decode Base64 encoded blocks in a string

Encryption / Security

Rot13

Encrypt english text by rotating the character positions in the alphabet by 13 places. The same process also decrypts Rot13 encoded text. The function maintains character case.

Link: Apply Rot13 encryption

Randomise String

Randomly re-arrainges the characters in the string. There is no manual seeding of the random number generator in JavaScript, instead the Math.random() method is seeded automatically using the current millisecond time. This means there is no way to maintain a randomising pattern and the randomisation will be changed every time the stage is processed. To hold a randomised string for a time it pause the stage to freeze the output or copy the output into a new stack. Pausing does not allow the randomised string to be recorded in a StringThinger link.

Link: Shuffle the characters in a string

Password Strength %

returns a percentage measure of the string's strength as a password based on length, character range, duplication, etc. This should not be considered in any way a reliable measure of password suitability.

Link: Estimate password strength

MD5 (auto)

Generate an MD5 hash of the string. If there are any characters in the string with a character code greater than 0x7F then the string is first passed through String to UTF-8. The returned MD5 hash will be 32 hexadeciaml characters.

Link:

MD5 (for UTF-8)

As MD5 (auto) but the character codes are assumed to be 8bit values. All values are masked to the least significant 8 bits prior to processing (code&127).

Link: Generate an MD5 hash from a string of 8bit characters

Vigenère cipher

Encrypt the string using a polyalphabetic substitution Vigenère cipher which uses a series of Caesar ciphers derived from the letters in the given keyword. Essentially the substitution for each letter is decided by the relative distance from the letter in the same position in the key which is wrapped to match the length of the plain text input. This only functions with the Latin alphabet, all other characters in both the plain text input and the key will be ignored by the encryption process. The cypher text will retain the case of the plain text.

Link: Encrypt a string using a Vigenère cipher

Decode Vigenère

Decrypts cyphertext encypted using Vigenère cipher. As with the encryption process the process will ignore non-alpha characters in both the cypher text and the key. Othe than the ignored characters the key must be identical to the one used for encryption.

Link: Decrypt a string encoded using a Vigenère cypher

Generate

Make Token

Generate a random string of characters from the range available from the input string. One way to create a token of a range of specific characters is to use the Make Char Range to create an expanded set as input. As with Randomise String the there is no ability to seed the randon number generator, so the result will be different each time the stage is processed. The process may select any of the characters from the input including spaces, newlines, combining/zero-width characters.

Link: Generate a random string from a set of characters

Make Char Range

Output a set of characters from a given range.

Link: Make a list of characters

Make Range from Chars

In a sense this function reverses the process of Make Char Range generating a range definition from the available characters in the string. The shortest sequential range (defined by the dash as in a-z) is four characters, a smaller range than this takes up fewer characters than the definition of the range. So abcd will be collapsed to a-d, but efg will be returned as is.

Link: Generate character range definition

Show Function Code

Output the code of the function as generated by the Function.toString() method. Without a function name it will output a list of function titles and names.

function (string) {
    var new_string = "";
    var i = string.length;
    while (i--) {
        new_string += string.charAt(i);
    }
    return new_string;
}

Link: Display function code

Super Stage

List Super Stage

Apply a sub stack to each item in a list. See the Super Stage section for more information on using this function.

RegExp Super Stage

Apply a sub stack to every match in the string. See the Super Stage section for more information on using this function.

Miscellaneous

To Morse Code

Convert the string to morse code. Characters with no Morse Code representation are discarded.

Link: Convert a string to Morse Code

From Morse Code

Decode a Morse Code sequence to a readable string. Replaces sequences of characters defined as Morse Code with the characters they represent. The characters in the returned string are always in upper case.

Link: Decode Morse Code

To NATO Phonetic

Replace each alpha character with its NATO phonetic spelling alphabet code words. Title case will be used for code word replacing a capital letter and lower case for all other code words.

Link: Convert string to NATO phenetic spelling alphabet

From NATO Phonetic

Replace each NATO phonetic code word with the character it represents. All words from the input are truncated to the first letter regardless of whether the word is actually defined as NATO Phonetic, except those defined in the arguments replacing spaces and periods. The input string will always be split on the defined separator.

Link: Convert Nato phonetic selling alphabet sequence to a string

Flip Text

Replace characters in the string with Unicode alternatives that resemble the original rotated through 180°. The string is first converted to lower case and the resulting string is reversed. Characters with no defined alternates will be repeated in the output unchanged.

Link: Flip Text

Un-Flip Text

Reverse the Flip Text process. If successful this will produce a lower case string. Characters that are not defined as flipped are repeated in the output unchanged.

Link: Un-flip flipped text.