Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jonathan Dean on December 19, 2012 at 1:57pm

First, if you try to append a non-string value to a string it'll get weird.  Instead of

mystring="The ADC value is: " + analogRead(A15);

you should use

mystring="The ADC value is: " + String(analogRead(A15), DEC);

to append a new String (created from a decimal value) to your existing String.  Note that the original method won't cause a compile error, but what you get over the serial port will likely be garbage.  (What you're doing is adding the value read from the analog port to the memory location of mystring, and it'll pass that to println which will read from that incorrect point until it encounters a null byte.)

Second, you have to break the String object back to an array of chars, and to do that you have to have an array of chars to put it in.  If you know what the length of your string is going to be, or at least some sort of maximum range, it's pretty easy.  We know that your string will only be 23 characters long ("The ADC value is: " = 18, "1023" [the max analogRead() value] = 4, and one extra for the terminating null character), so our array only has to be that big.  If you change the wording you'll have to resize the array.

char otherString[23]; //char array to copy the String into

mystring.toCharArray(otherstring, mystring.length() + 1); //Copy the string (+1 is to hold the terminating null char)

sendlog(otherString); //send our char array copy of the String object to sendlog()

Char arrays don't offer all the flexibility that a String object does, and they're sometimes kind of hard to work with, but they're a lot smaller and faster (they only take up as much space as there are characters).

I hope this helps you out.  You could achieve the same outcome using only a char array, but the String object is so much easier to use, especially for converting a number to a string and appending one string to another.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jonathan Dean on December 19, 2012 at 6:25pm

I keep reading in the Arduino reference that you can use "Constant String" + analogRead(), myString += 123, and similar constructions, but whenever I do I get random-length garbage.  Using the String constructor to concatenate a number to a string works though.  Who knows.

• ▶ Reply