Adobe ColdFusion 8

ListQualify

Description

Inserts a string at the beginning and end of list elements.

Returns

A copy of the list, with qualifier before and after the specified element(s).

Category

List functions

Function syntax

ListQualify(list, qualifier [, delimiters, elements ])

See also

Lists in "Using ColdFusion Variables" 2 in the ColdFusion Developer's Guide

History

ColdFusion MX: Changed behavior: as the elements parameter value, you must specify "all" or "char"; otherwise, ColdFusion throws an exception. (In earlier releases, the function ignored an invalid value, and used "all"; this was inconsistent with other functions.)

Parameters

Parameter

Description
list

A list or a variable that contains one.

qualifier

A string or a variable that contains one. Character or string to insert before and after the list elements specified in the elements parameter.
delimiters

A string or a variable that contains one. Character(s) that separate list elements. The default value is comma.

If this parameter contains more than one character, ColdFusion uses the first character as the delimiter and ignores the remaining characters.

elements
  • all: all elements
  • char: elements that are composed of alphabetic characters

Usage

The new list might not preserve all of the delimiters in the list.

ColdFusion ignores empty list elements; thus, the list "a,b,c,,,d" has four elements.

Example

<cfquery name = "GetEmployeeNames" datasource = "cfdocexamples">
SELECT     FirstName, LastName
FROM     Employees
</cfquery>

<h3>ListQualify Example</h3>
<p>This example uses ListQualify to put the full names of the 
    employees in the query within quotation marks.</p>
<cfset myArray = ArrayNew(1)>

<!--- loop through query; append these names successively 
    to the last element --->
<cfloop query = "GetEmployeeNames">
    <cfset temp = ArrayAppend(myArray, "#FirstName# #LastName#")>
</cfloop>

<!--- sort that array descending alphabetically --->
<cfset myAlphaArray = ArraySort(myArray, "textnocase")>

<!--- show the resulting array as a list --->
<cfset myList = ArrayToList(myArray, ",")>

<cfoutput>
    <p>The contents of the unqualified list are as follows:    </p>
    #myList#
</cfoutput>

<!--- show the resulting alphabetized array as a qualified list with 
    single quotation marks around each full name.--->
<cfset qualifiedList1 = ListQualify(myList,"'",",","CHAR")>

<!--- output the array as a list --->
<cfoutput>
    <p>The contents of the qualified list are as follows:    </p>
    <p>#qualifiedList1#</p>
</cfoutput>

<!--- show the resulting alphabetized array as a qualified list with quotation
    marks around each full name. We use &quot; to denote quotation marks
    because the quotation mark character is a control character. --->
<cfset qualifiedList2 = ListQualify(myList,"&quot;",",","CHAR")>

<!--- output the array as a list --->
<cfoutput>
    <p>The contents of the second qualified list are:    </p>
    <p>#qualifiedList2#</p>
</cfoutput>