# Strings cut
## 
Strings cut
### Description
The Strings Cut transform cuts a portion of a string (i.e., a substring). If the designated field is out of range, it returns blank.
| Hop Engine | ✓ |
| ---------- | ------------ |
| Spark | ? |
| Flink | ? |
| Dataflow | ? |
### Options
| Option | Description |
| ---------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Transform name | Name of the transform. |
| In stream field | Name of the field whose substring to cut. |
| Out stream field | When a field name is given here, the transform creates a new field with the substring. Otherwise the original field gets replaced by the substring. |
| Cut from | Designate where to begin cutting the substring. This value is 0-based, thus the first character in a string is 0. |
| Cut to | Designate where to end cutting the substring. This value is exclusive (1-based), so using a 1 includes the first character. The maximum length of the new string is Cut to minus Cut from. |
### Examples
Consider the following string (displayed here with positive and negative length references):
```
|0 |10 |20 |30 |40
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
|-40 |-30 |-20 |-10
```
The text above is considered as input string in all the following examples:
| Cut from | Cut to | Result | Notes |
| -------- | ------ | --------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 0 | 9 | `The quick` | Use `0` to refer to the first character |
| 10 | 19 | `brown fox` | Use two positive indexes to get a substring from the start of the input |
| 0 | -12 | `the lazy dog` | Use a negative index to get a substring from the end of the input |
| -13 | -23 | `jumps over` | Use two negative indexes to get a substring from the end of the input |
| 20 | 10 | (null) | When the first index is lower than the second, `null` is returned |
| 10 | 10 | (empty string) | When the two indexes are equal, an empty string (not `null`) is returned |
| 20 | 100 | `jumps over the lazy dog` | When the second index is greater than the input length, the returned substring extends to the end of the input |
| 50 | 100 | (null) | When the first index is greater than the input length, `null` is returned |
| 10 | -10 | `The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog` | When the two indexes have different signs, the entire input is returned |
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