Text processing in Lightact is done through a number of dedicated nodes in Layer Layouts. To avoid any confusion, let’s say right at the beginning that, in Lightact, a text is usually referred to as a string. For those that do not know, this has to do with variable types in computer coding.
String substring
String substring node extracts Output string from Input string starting at Start position of Length number of characters. So, if Input is A quick fox jumps over a dog. and Start is 2 and Length is 5, then Output is going to be quick. If Length is longer than the end of Input, all of the input is going to be output and if Start is negative, it will be converted to 0.
String add
String add node adds 2 or more strings together.
String contains
String contains node tries to find Needle in the Haystack. It outputs the 1st occurrence of the Needle or -1 if it is not found. Found is true if the needle was found and false if it was not.
String lowercase & uppercase
These 2 nodes convert Input into either lowercase or uppercase.
String length
String length node calculates the number of characters in a string.
Read string from file
Read string from file node reads a string from a file at Filepath. If successful, Success is true, false if it is not. In this case, Error describes the error. Node properties on the right, include Timeout[s] property which determines the timeout between 2 consecutive reads of the file. Default (and minimum) setting is 10 seconds.
Write string to file
Write string to file node writes a string connected to the String pin into a file with a Filename in Folder. If Filename is left empty, it will create a file laWriteString.txt. The extension txt is appended to the Filename automatically. If Write on change is true it does that whenever there is a change of String. If it is false, it does that every Timeout[s] seconds, which is a property of the node.
String to float and to integer
String to float and to integer nodes convert a string to a float or to an integer.