How to embed an image into a string?

Question

_{Note: The bug described in the post is in Mathematica 9, and has been fixed in 10.0.}

The documentation for String contains the following statements:

Strings can contain any sequence of ordinary and special characters:
…
Strings preserve internal formatting:
…
Strings can have any expression embedded:
…
"ab \[Integral]\!\(\*FractionBox[\(1\), \(x\)]\)\[DifferentialD]x cd"

Strings can contain graphics:
…
"ab \!\(\*\nGraphicsBox[DiskBox[{0, 0}],\nImageSize->{34., Automatic}]\) cd"

So I assumed that an image could be inserted anywhere in the string. I tried to copy images in different ways:

• from other Mathematica notebook cells, explicitly Imported before
• from web pages opened in a browser
• from image editors e.g. Paint
• taking screenshots

and paste them into expressions (as list elements, function arguments etc) and it all worked perfectly well. But when I try to paste images into string literals, then the string looks good (with the image embedded) in the input cell, but the expression gets corrupted when evaluated -- it is not even a String anymore:

(* In[1]:= *) logo = Import["https://wolfram.com/favicon.ico", "Image"]
(* Out[1]= *) 

(* In[2]:= *) Shallow["Mathematica ", 1] (* The image was copy-pasted from the previous cell *)
(* Out[2]//Shallow= *) Times[<<5>>]

Question 1: Is it a bug?

It is interesting that inserting plots into string literals works well.

I need a solution to insert images into strings programmatically. It could also serve as a workaround for this bug. I was not able to find a built-in function that does exactly this, so I tried to use "\!\(\*…\)" markup mentioned in the documentation for String. I was not able to find a documentation for this markup, so I started experimenting.

Question 2: Is there a complete documentation for this markup?

After several attempts, I ended up with the following function:

(* In[3]:= *) imageToString[image_Image] := 
    "\!\(\*" <> ToString[ToBoxes[image], InputForm] <> "\)";

(* In[4]:= *) "Mathematica " <> imageToString[logo]
(* Out[4]= *) Mathematica 

It seems to do what I need.

Question 3: Are there any shortcomings in my implementation? Is there a more simple/standard way to do this?

Answer 1

You can convert any expression to string by using ToString. If you want to preserve the visual representation, you should use ToString[(*your expression*), StandardForm].

logo = Import["http://wolfram.com/favicon.ico", "Image"]
logostr = ToString[logo, StandardForm]
StringJoin["Mathematica", logostr]
% // StringQ

Edit:

By checking the cell expression of the paste-into cell, I think I'd like to agree with Simon's comment that it looks like a bug:

Answer 2

It's not clear when it is desirable to save an image inside a string. A similar outcome can be achieved by keeping everything (any possible format image, graphics, text, equation) in a list, and then just choosing the method of display. For example:

logo = Import["http://wolfram.com/favicon.ico", "Image"];
list = {"a string, an image ", logo, " and another image ", logo};

Of course this is not naturally formatted well for presentation, but this can be easily achieved by

Row[list]

If you look at the FullForm of this, it is perfectly well formed -- it is a long expression starting with

Row[List["a string, an image ", <<1>>, <<21>>, 
   Image[RawArray["Byte", List[List[List[0, 0, 0, 0],