String Handling in Unreal Engine
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String Handling in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.8 Documentation | Epic Developer Community Table of Contents Developer String Handling String Handling An overview of the string classes available in Unreal with reference guides for FName, FText, and FString. On this page FName FNames are a lightweight type used for efficient string handling. Specifically, Unreal Engine maintains a global table of unique strings, and an FName stores an instance number and an index reference to a given string, facilitating quick lookup and access. Additionally, the FName subsystem uses a hash table to provide fast string-to-FName conversions. FNames are particularly useful for representing object names, identifiers, and other strings that are frequently compared. When you name a new asset in the Content Browser , change a parameter in a Dynamic Material Instance, or access a bone in a Skeletal Mesh, you are using FNames . FNames are case-insensitive, immutable, and cannot be manipulated. FName Reference Guide FText In Unreal Engine (UE) the primary component for text localization is the FText class. All user-facing text should use this class, as it supports text localization by providing the following features: Creating localized text literals. Formatting Text (to generate text from a placeholder pattern). Generating text from numbers. Generating text from dates and times. Generating derived text , such as making text upper or lower case. FText also features the AsCultureInvariant function (or the INVTEXT macro), which creates non-localized, or "culture invariant" text. This is useful for things like converting a player name from an external API into something you can display in your user interface. You can create a blank FText using either FText::GetEmpty() , or by using just FText() . FText Reference Guide FString Unlike FName and FText , FString can be searched, modified, and compared against other strings. However, these manipulations can make FStrings more expensive than the immutable string classes. This is because FString objects store their own character arrays, while FName and FText objects store an index to a shared character array, and can establish equality based purely on this index value. FString Reference Guide Printf The FString function, Printf , can create FString objects the format argument specifiers as the C++ printf function. Similarly, the UE_LOG macro prints a printf formatted string to the screen, log output, and log files, depending on what type of UE4 build is running. Remember that to use these strings and conversion you will need to include the necessary header files. A list of which header files are needed can be found on the API reference page for each string. Conversions From To Example FName FString TestHUDString = TestHUDName.ToString(); FName FText TestHUDText = FText::FromName(TestHUDName); FName -> FText is valid in some cases, but be aware that the FNames's content will not benefit from the FText's "auto localization". FString FName TestHUDName = FName(*TestHUDString); FString -> FName is dangerous as the conversion is lossy as FName's are case insensitive. FString FText TestHUDText = FText::FromString(TestHUDString); FString -> FText is valid in some cases, but be aware that the FString's content will not benefit from the FText's "auto localization". FText FString TestHUDString = TestHUDText.ToString(); FText -> FString is dangerous as it is a potentially lossy conversion for some languages. FText FName There is no direct conversion from FText to FName. Instead, convert to FString and then to FName. FText -> FString -> FName is dangerous as the conversion is lossy as FName's are case insensitive. FString int32 int32 TestInt = FCString::Atoi(*MyFString); FString float float TestFloat = FCString::Atof(*MyFString); int32 FString FString TestString = FString::FromInt(MyInt); float FString FString TestString = FString::SanitizeFloat(MyFloat); Encoding In general, you should be using the TEXT() macro when setting string variable literals. If you do not specify the TEXT() macro, your literal will be encoded using ANSI, which is highly limited in what characters it supports. Any ANSI literals being passed into FString need to undergo a conversion to TCHAR (native Unicode encoding), so it is more efficient to use TEXT(). For more about encoding, see the Character Encoding documentation. programming strings fname ftext fstring Ask questions and help your peers Developer Forums Write your own tutorials or read those from others Learning Library On this page FName FText FString Printf Conversions Encoding