How do I convert a string into a sequence of characters in Nim?

Question

I want to do different operations with the characters in a string e.g. map or reverse. As a first step I want to convert the string into a sequence.

Given a string like "ab". How do I get a sequence like @['a','b']?

"ab".split("") returns the whole string.

I have seen an example with "ab".items before, but that doesn't seem to work (is that deprecated?)

Answer 1

You can also use a list comprehension:

import future

let
  text = "nim lang"
  parts = lc[c | (c <- text), char]

Parts is @['n', 'i', 'm', ' ', 'l', 'a', 'n', 'g'].

Answer 2

items is an iterator, not a function, so you can only call it in a few specific contexts (like for loop). However, you can easily construct a sequence from an iterator using toSeq from sequtils module (docs). E.g.:

import sequtils
echo toSeq("ab".items)

Answer 3

Here's another variant using map from sequtils and => from future (renamed to sugar on Nim devel):

import sequtils, sugar
echo "nim lang".map(c => c)

Outputs @['n', 'i', 'm', ' ', 'l', 'a', 'n', 'g'].