' FB 1.05.0 Win64

' A character is essentially a string of length 1 in FB though there is a built-in function, String,
' which creates a string by repeating a character a given number of times.

' To avoid repeated concatenation (a slow operation) when the string to be repeated has a length
' greater than one, we instead create a buffer of the required size and then fill that.

Function repeat(s As String, n As Integer) As String
  If n < 1 Then Return ""
  If n = 1 Then Return s
  Var size = Len(s)
  If size = 0 Then Return s  ' empty string
  If size = 1 Then Return String(n, s[0])  ' repeated single character
  Var buffer = Space(size * n)  'create buffer for size > 1
  For i As Integer = 0 To n - 1
    For j As Integer = 0 To size - 1
      buffer[i * size + j] = s[j]
    Next j
  Next i
  Return buffer
End Function

Print repeat("rosetta", 1)
Print repeat("ha", 5)
Print repeat("*", 5)
Print
Print "Press any key to quit program"
Sleep