Interacting with text

The most common type of data that you will be working with is text, also commonly known as a string. Textual data can take the format of a combination of alphanumeric characters. There are several basic functions that we can use to work with textual data.

First of all, if we wish to cast a value (convert numbers, dates, and time to text), then we can use the Text function:

Text(<the value you wish to cast here>)

If you are inserting input into your app that contains tags, for example, HTML or XML, then you may wish to use PlainText (shown in Figure 6.5: Demonstration of HTML being removed from a string) to strip out all of the tags so that you are then able to work with a plaintext value:

Figure 6.5: Demonstration of HTML being removed from a string

Once you are working with a string of text, especially if you've had to convert it from another data type, you can then start to use the other functions that are available to you. The most common actions that...