To start our journey into Clojure, lets be a little introspective and represent ourselves in code.
In this section you will write your first bit of code and learn about using a string in Clojure.
We can write a sentence about ourselves as a string. A string is a collection of characters and is always between double quotes, for example "I am a string"
.
Lets look at the simplest possible way you could write some information about yourself
"John Stevenson, age 21, height 6ft4, blue eyes, hobbies include Clojure"
Write a brief description of yourself
Using a string, define yourself by including details such as name, age, eye colour and hobbies. None of this information has to be true.
""
Strings are used in code for things like peoples names and other non-numerical information, such as email & postal addresses.
In the financial world, strings may be used to keep records of transactions, combining to create a history of all the transactions that month on a bank statement.
Strings are also commonly used to keep a log of what your code is doing, especially when there are errors occurring. A very basic way to debug your code is to print out error messages as strings.
Technical Note: A string is a type and in Clojure that type is
java.lang.String
. Strings in Java are immutable (cannot be changed when created) so it makes sense to use the Java String type than create a specific one for Clojure.