Generate a string of X characters in length

[Bones Outlander]

I'm trying to work out the best way of generating a string of a variable length of a single characters (let's say an *).

So basically I want to pass a variable into a function and that function returns a string of that number of characters .

So if i passed in 10 my string would be "**********"

In some languages

str="*" * 8

would return "********", but not LSL.

Is the only way to loop around adding one character each time, or is there a more efficient way of dong this?

Thanks

 

  

Edited November 16, 2022 by Bones Outlander

[Wulfie Reanimator]

Loop is the most general way to do it. You could write a custom function that applies a given character X times, and that's about as convenient as you can get.

Depending on your specific use-case, you could also go the other way around and do llGetSubString("***************", 0, n); assuming you know the maximum length you'll need. This way would be more speedy and memory-efficient (since you're not creating a bunch of immediately-discarded strings).

Edited November 16, 2022 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Quistess Alpha]

If you need a Lot of the same character in a row, you can decompose the number of repetitions into its binary representation and construct the string by doubling and adding 1;

Ex, 245 = 0b1111.0101 =>

string x = "X";
// 245  = 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 1
string x245 = x;    // 1
x245 = x245+x245+x; // 1
x245 = x245+x245+x; // 1
x245 = x245+x245+x; // 1
x245 = x245+x245;   // 0
x245 = x245+x245+x; // 1
x245 = x245+x245;   // 0
x245 = x245+x245+x; // 1

Or in general:

string rep_string(string s, integer reps)
{   integer rep_max = 1024; // a sane upper limit that is a power of 2.
    string ret; // the return value.
    do{
       ret = ret+ret;
       if(rep_max&reps) ret+= s;
    }while(rep_max>>1); // I hope the spec says 1>>1 == 0; I didn't check.
    return ret;
}

(untested)

Edited November 16, 2022 by Quistess Alpha
forgot to return ret.