The FileTools:-Text subpackage is a collection of text file manipulation utilities.  These commands allow the creation, reading, and writing of files using text format.

Text files represent data by converting the Maple representation into strings and then writing the strings to the file.  As well, text files can contain formatting information in the form of newlines.

Text file formats vary with platform.  The major incompatibility is that Windows, UNIX, and Macintosh all have different representations for newline characters.  To accommodate this when reading a text file, Maple recognizes all three newline representations as a valid newline.  When writing, Maple uses the native newline character to represent newlines.  The FileTools:-Text commands recognize a newline character in a file and return it as "\\n", even for multibyte newline representations.

Each command in the FileTools:-Text subpackage can be accessed by using either the long form or the short form of the command name in the command calling sequence.

The long form, FileTools:-Text:-command, is always available. The short form can be used after loading the package.

To display the help page for a particular FileTools:-Text command, see Getting Help with a Command in a Package.