Editing String literal (section)

===Constructor functions===
Another option, which is rarely used in modern languages, is to use a function to construct a string, rather than representing it via a literal. This is generally not used in modern languages because the computation is done at run time, rather than at parse time.

For example, early forms of [[BASIC]] did not include escape sequences or any other workarounds listed here, and thus one instead was required to use the <code>CHR$</code> function, which returns a string containing the character corresponding to its argument. In [[ASCII]] the quotation mark has the value 34, so to represent a string with quotes on an ASCII system one would write
<syntaxhighlight lang="qbasic">
"I said, " + CHR$(34) + "Can you hear me?" + CHR$(34)
</syntaxhighlight>
In C, a similar facility is available via <code>[[sprintf]]</code> and the <code>%c</code> "character" format specifier, though in the presence of other workarounds this is generally not used:
<syntaxhighlight lang="c">
char buffer[32];
snprintf(buffer, sizeof buffer, "This is %cin quotes.%c", 34, 34);
</syntaxhighlight>

These constructor functions can also be used to represent nonprinting characters, though escape sequences are generally used instead. A similar technique can be used in C++ with the <code>std::string</code> stringification operator.