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How can I parse a string to produce a superscript?

Posted 9 years ago

Hi, I'm trying to read information from a file and use to label a line in a plot, i.e. If stringfromfile="abcd"; (* then inside Plot ... ) Epilog->{Text[stringfromfile]} This works fine for most case, but I don't know how to generate superscripts in this situation, i.e. Read in a string, such as: stringfromfile="did you know that ^4^He is an interesting isotope" (I used the "^" here as a arbitrary marker of the superscripted character) and parse it such that Text[stringfromfile] produces: "did you know that ⁴He is an interesting isotope". I tried a bunch of approaches, but the closest I got is the following: tmp = StringSplit[stringfromfile, "^"]; Text[(tmp[[1]] <> ""^tmp[[2]] <> tmp[[3]])]; This produces: "did you know that ^{4He is an interesting isotope}" Does anyone know a way to store / interpret this formatting information, short of generating the BoxData code: "\<\"did you know that\\!\\(\\SuperscriptBox[\\(\\\\ \\), \\(4\\)]\\)He is an interesting isotope\"\>" Thanks

POSTED BY: T Saab

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Posted 9 years ago

Hi, The string structure you are looking for can be obtained using boxes in the following way: string = (RowBox[{"Did you know that", SuperscriptBox["", 4], "He is an interesting isotope?"}] // DisplayForm) In case the space between `4` and `He` appears to be too large, you can modify it either with `\[NegativeThinSpace]` or with `\[NegativeVeryThinSpace]`: string = (RowBox[{"Did you know that", SuperscriptBox["", 4], "\[NegativeVeryThinSpace]", "He is an interesting isotope?"}] // DisplayForm) It is also possible to include this extra piece of code directly in the last string for visually different results.

POSTED BY: Xavier Roy

Posted 9 years ago

Extending upon Xavier's response, here is a function that replaces every ^nn^ superscript in a string with a Superscript object, and renders it as a Row. superscriptsToRow[input_] := Row[StringReplace[input, "^" ~~ sup : DigitCharacter .. ~~ "^" :> Superscript["", sup]] /. StringExpression -> List] superscriptsToRow[stringfromfile]