How can I get a variant's string data?

Question

Greetings!
When I view a variant indicator, I see a (generally) human-readable block of text.  This makes sense to me, since, as I understand it, a variant is, internally, a kind of flattened string.  My question is:  is there a way that I can get that string in LabVIEW, and can I then load that string back into a variant?
I'm trying to preserve the human-readable aspect of the variant data.  Flatten to/Unflatten from String is not human readable, and the variant versions of Flatten/Unflatten drop the variant's attributes.  I've also tried Flatten to/Unflatten from XML, which drops the attributes AND does not unflatten correctly.
Any help you can offer would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Allen C. Smith
Ktech Corporation

Answer 1

I think Allen wants to have access to the plain string that is displayed in the variant container and I have not found a way to get it. The method should require no code and should be independent on the complexity of the data contained in the variant.
I agree this could be somewhat useful and should be supported. For example, we could have a readable property for the variant indicator similar to the text.text property of string indicators.
The text.text string property gives the text formatted as shown in the indicator and thus depends on the display style (normal, '\'-codes, password, hex). It can be e.g. used to convert a plain string to a plain string that incorporates '\'-codes that is available to the code. (See image). This could be useful in a case where you want to mix '\'-codes and plain codes in a descriptive display, for example containing the following three lines:
"The received string in '\'-codes is:
ABC\tDEF\tGHI\n
please verify there are no unexpected characters"
Message Edited by altenbach on 01-17-2007 09:40 AM
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Attachments:
StringDisplay.png ‏10 KB