TEXT!

Summary

text string series of characters

Kind

Fundamental type

A textual string, such as "abc".

(Note: Historical Rebol called this STRING! But due to other types in the class of string such as the TAG! form like <abc>, Revolt uses the term STRING! for the category of such types–not the most common instance of it.)

Dashed Strings

Text that is long, spans lines, or contains quotes can be written between -[ and ]-:

>> -[She said "hi" to me.]-
== -[She said "hi" to me.]-

Historical Rebol used braces for this, nesting by counting { and }. That broke on unpaired braces, as in C code like '}'. Braces are now another list type called FENCE! (peer to BLOCK! and GROUP!), and the dashed form avoids the problem: a lone ] or { inside doesn’t end anything.

>> -[if (c = ']') { x[1] = 0; }]- = "if (c = ']') { x[1] = 0; }"
== \~okay~\  ; antiform (logic!)

Nesting

A dashed string can contain another with the same number of dashes, as long as the pairs match. The inner ]- closes the inner -[, not the outer one:

>> -[a -[b]- c]- = "a -[b]- c"
== \~okay~\  ; antiform (logic!)

The same goes for a nested pair with more dashes, which also matches up:

>> -[a ---[b]--- c]- = "a ---[b]--- c"
== \~okay~\  ; antiform (logic!)

More dashes on the outside are only needed when the content has a closing delimiter with no opening partner. Then use more dashes than the content does:

>> --[an unpaired ]- inside]-- = "an unpaired ]- inside"
== \~okay~\  ; antiform (logic!)

See Should Strings Nest Levels to Avoid Escaping? (2024) for the reasoning.