String handling

LENGTH, MID and RIGHT

• The 2026 guide's string routines are LENGTH, MID, RIGHT, UCASE and LCASE.
• Positions start at 1.
• MID(text, start, length) copies length characters from start.
• RIGHT(text, n) copies the last n characters.

OUTPUT LENGTH("Happy Days")
OUTPUT MID("ABCDEFGH", 2, 3)
OUTPUT RIGHT("ABCDEFGH", 3)

UCASE and LCASE take one character

• The guide's UCASE and LCASE take a single character, not a whole string.
• UCASE('h') is 'H'. A character that is not a letter comes back unchanged.
• When a paper needs a whole string in capitals, the insert gives you TO_UPPER.

OUTPUT UCASE('h')
OUTPUT LCASE('W')
OUTPUT TO_UPPER("Error 803")

& joins strings

• & concatenates two strings. "Summer" & " " & "Pudding" is "Summer Pudding".
• IGCSE 0478 has no &. There you list values after OUTPUT with commas.
• Commas still work in this guide when you only want them printed side by side.

OUTPUT "Summer" & " " & "Pudding"

Common mistakes

• MID counts from 1. The second argument is the start, the third is how many characters.
• Do not pass a whole string to UCASE. That routine is for one character.

Now you try

• Use MID, RIGHT and &.