nLab string (computer science)

This entry is about the notion in computer science. For the notion in particle physics/quantum gravity see at string theory.

Idea

In computer science, “$string$” is a traditional name for the data type of lists of elements of a given alphabet $\mathscr{A}$.

From the point of view of categorical semantics, the data type $String$ equipped with its evident concatenation functionality is the free monoid on $\mathscr{A}$.

Moreover, from the point of view of monads in functional programming, the writing of consecutive log messages of type $String$ is desribed by the writer monad $Writer\big((string, conc)\big)$

Related concepts

• stream

• data type

• list, free monoid

• language, word

• syntax, abstract syntax tree

References

See also:

• Wikipedia, String_(computer_science)