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In computer science, a string is a set of characters. This may be composed of letters, symbols or numbers. In GIS context, the term ''string'' is often used as opposed to ''numbers''.

E.g., a [[nodata value]] in a raster-map may be defined as a string (“nan” or “NA”) or as a number (e.g. “-9999“, which is common in [[ASCII]] files).

Note that a ''string'' may also contain or completely consist of numbers, but these are not recognized as numbers by the computer; which practically means that you can not use them in a mathematic way, e.g. for solving calculations.

==See also==
* [[wikipedia:String_(computer_science)|String]] in Wikipedia

[[category: FAQ (QGIS Tutorial)]]