Data Type Casting

Type Casting

It is possible to manually cast a value to a given type.

This is done by prefixing the value with a type specifier.

nM> res L:pi 3.14
<Casting to an integer discards any fractional part.>
nM> res pi
  L: PI              = 3

Data Type	Type Specifier
Signed Byte	B:
Signed (Short) Integer	I:
Signed Long Integer	L:
Signed Extra-Long Integer	X:
Single-Precision Floating Point	F:
Double-Precision Floating Point	D:
ASCII (similar to S:)	A:
String	S:
Generic Number (same as D:)	N:
Untranslated (do not substitute results values)	U:
Unknown (same as D: for numbers, S: all others)	_:
Message (used only in `processMessage`)	M:
Table	T:
Object	O:
Boolean	Z:
List (X-Midas 4.6.0+ only)	C:
Table (X-Midas 4.6.0+ only)	H:
KVList (X-Midas 4.6.0+ only)	K:
XMValue (X-Midas 4.6.0+ only)	V:

Data types not yet in BLUE ICD
Support for boolean was added in NeXtMidas 2.5.0. It has not been formally added to the Blue File CCD or X-Midas; however X-Midas has reserved the `'Z'` type letter for this purpose. X-Midas 4.6.0+ List ('C'), Table ('H'), KVList ('K'), and XMValue ('V') data types have not been formally added to the Blue File CCD or NeXtMidas.

X-Midas Users Take Note:
Use of `A:` is discouraged in NeXtMidas, `S:` should be used in place of it. The presence of `A:` is maintained for the benefit of X-Midas users, but may be deprecated in the future.

Don't Make This Mistake:
There are several key differences between ASCII (A:) values and String (S:) values: ASCII values store 7-bit ASCII characters, Strings can store Unicode characters. ASCII values are Fortran strings (trailing space is discarded), Strings can have trailing white space. ASCII values are typically allocated in 8-byte blocks similar to the usage of the ASCII type in a Blue File (e.g. the XA value "ABC" takes up 80 bytes, "ABC" followed by 77 spaces that get ignored), Strings use only the space required. ASCII values are treated as unquoted and can lose case sensitivity within a table in situations that a normal String would not. (While this is not ideal, it matches legacy behavior.)

Don't Make This Mistake:

There are several key differences between ASCII (A:) values and String (S:) values:

ASCII values store 7-bit ASCII characters, Strings can store Unicode characters.
ASCII values are Fortran strings (trailing space is discarded), Strings can have trailing white space.
ASCII values are typically allocated in 8-byte blocks similar to the usage of the ASCII type in a Blue File (e.g. the XA value "ABC" takes up 80 bytes, "ABC" followed by 77 spaces that get ignored), Strings use only the space required.
ASCII values are treated as unquoted and can lose case sensitivity within a table in situations that a normal String would not. (While this is not ideal, it matches legacy behavior.)