MOF strings

A string is a data type that contains a string of characters usually intended as human-readable text. MOF describes two types of strings, which use to hold single or multiple characters. MOF also has a series of rules describing the use of quotes within a string.

The following table lists the string data types for MOF.

Data type	Automation type	Description
char16	VT_I2	Single 16-bit Unicode character in Universal Character Set 2 (UCS-2) format
string	VT_BSTR	Unicode character string

Use the following guidelines when writing strings for MOF:

• Surround single-character constants with single quotes.

  If you do not use single quotes with single character constants, you must use the integer representation of the Unicode character value. Optionally, you could specify the character literally with the \x escape sequence from the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) C standard, as shown:

  char16  TestChar1 = '\x4133';
  char16  Testchar2 = 'A';
  

  Because MOF is based on Unicode, you can also specify 16-bit values.

  Be aware that single-character constants in ANSI C format are surrounded by double quotes.

• Surround character strings with double quotes.

  DTime    = "19940107140332.000000-300";
  

• Concatenate successive quote strings with one or more white spaces.

  DString = "This" "becomes a long string";
  

• Use an escape sequence beginning with a backslash to embed quotes into a string.

  DMyString = "This is an \"embedded quote\" example."
  

The following example describes how to initialize string properties and a string parameter:

class  StringDataClass
{
    [key]  String    Dstring;
    DateTime         DTime;
    char16           CharVal1;
    char16           CharVal2;
    sint32 DiskMethod ([in, Id(0)] string Description = "Disk 1");
};

instance of StringDataClass
{
    Dstring = "this can go on for " " some time"
       " before it is complete";
    DTime    = "19940107140332.000000-300";
    CharVal1 = '\x16';
    CharVal2 = '\x32';
};