Introduction
Instead of specifying single index values to retrieve single characters, substrings can be retrieved by listing muliple values and/or ranges. In some other programming langauges, this feature is known as slicing. The range operator '..' is available to specify a range. If no value prcedes the range operator, than 0 is assumed. If no value follows the range operator, then the last character is assumed. The result will always be a string. Negative indexing is supported.
echo( abcdefg { 0,2,4,2,0 } ); // Returns 'aceca'
echo( abcdefg { 3..5 } ); // Returns 'def'
echo( abcdefg { 5..3 } ); // Empty string. Ranges cannot be listed in reverse direction
echo( abcdefg { -3..-1 } ); // Returns 'efg' - Last 3 characters
echo( abcdefg { 4..-1 } ); // Same result
echo( abcdefg { 3..99 } ); // Returns 'defg'
echo( abcdefg { -99..2 } ); // Returns 'abc'
echo( abcdefg { 0..2,5,1..3 } ); // Combinations
echo( abcdefg { 3.. } ); // Returns 'defg'
echo( abcdefg { ..3 } ); // Returns 'abcd'
echo( abcdefg { .. } ); // Returns full string
echo( abcdefg { ..,.. } ); // Returns full string twice: abcdefgabcdefgaceca
def
efg
efg
defg
abc
abcfbcd
defg
abcd
abcdefg
abcdefgabcdefg