joinStrings

Joins a set of strings or lists to create a single string.

The function is often combined with map to produce an amended list of values.

Parameters

STRING (string or list)
The first string or list to join.
STRING (string or list)
The second string or list to join. You can add more strings or lists if required.

Examples

These examples show how to join strings:

ATL in Script	Result
`[[joinStrings('A','B','C')]]`	ABC
`[[joinStrings('Brian','Blessed')]]`	BrianBlessed
`[[joinStrings('Brian',' Blessed')]]`	Brian Blessed
`[[joinStrings('Brian',' ','Blessed')]]`	Brian Blessed

These examples show the effect when you join lists:

ATL in Script	Result
`[[joinStrings(('A','B'),('C','D'),('E','F'))]]`	ABCDEF
`[[joinStrings(('A'),('B','C'),('D','E','F'))]]`	ABCDEF

Tip

The result is a concatenated string. To flatten a list of lists into a one list, use flattenLists.

Using joinStrings with map

The function is often combined with map to produce an amended list of values.

ATL in Script	Result
[[ myList = makeList(10,20,30) map(myList, x -> joinStrings(x,'%')) ]]	10%, 20% and 30%
[[ myList = makeList('week','month','year') map(myList, x -> joinStrings(x,'ly')) ]]	weekly, monthly and yearly

Complex example

The joinStrings and map combination is helpful when mapping a complex list-like structure such as a list of ATL objects.

Important

Download and open THIS EXAMPLE PROJECT to work through the next example.

Go to the project's SummaryNarrative script and click Preview. You should see this:
The content in red is a list of ATL objects: one object for each driver country. Each object has three fields: country, pctChange, and changeDirection. We want to map the list of objects to this list of strings:
the United States of America (8.39% down), Germany (7.36% down), Canada (6.13% down) and France (2.25% down).
Change the last ATL block to: [[map(driverAnalytics(data2021,data2020), x -> x.country)]].
Click Preview. You should see this:
Using map and dot notation, we've mapped the list of ATL objects to a list of countries, but we need joinStrings to pull in other values from each ATL object. We can also add parentheses where required.
Change [[map(driverAnalytics(data2021,data2020), x -> x.country)]] to:
```
[[map(driverAnalytics(data2021,data2020), x -> joinStrings(x.country," (", abs(x.pctChange), "% ", x.changeDirection,")"))]]
```
Note
Note that quotation marks aren't required for parameter inputs such as x.country or abs(x.pctChange) — as these return a string or numeric value — but quotation marks are required for the other input strings.
Join the ATL block to the end of the preceding paragraph, select all script content, and click Clear Formatting:
Click Preview. You should get this narrative output:
Our sales total in 2021 was $85.39MM, down 4.72% from 2020's total of $89.62MM. The drivers for this negative trend were sales in the United States of America (8.39% down), Germany (7.36% down), Canada (6.13% down) and France (2.25% down).