# icon_states proc

Source: https://ref.dm-lang.org/proc/icon_states

### Format
> `icon_states(Icon, mode=0)`

### Returns
> A list of text strings.

### Args
- `Icon`: the icon being accessed
- `mode`: applies to icons larger than one tile when using map_format=TILED_ICON_MAP; see below


Icons may have one or more internal states, which are identified by name. The state "" is the default.

If you are not using the TILED_ICON_MAP value for world.map_format, you can ignore the mode argument.

When graphics bigger than world.icon_size are used as an icon, and the map_format in use is TILED_ICON_MAP, they are internally broken up into tiles, one per icon state. The `mode` argument was added for big icons that get split into several smaller tiles. Those icons have several smaller states per true icon_state. For example if your 64×64 icon has a state named "open", it will contain states "open", "open 0,0", "open 1,0", "open 0,1", and "open 1,1" which are all used internally. (If the state name is blank, the sub-states are just "0,0", etc.) When using the TILED_ICON_MAP format, you need these for displaying the icon over several different atoms.

mode=0 will only show the sub-states ("open 0,0" and so on), all of which can be safely extracted in a single-tile icon via the `icon()` proc. mode=1 will show the main state names ("open"); any time you work with that state name you're working with the full-size icon. mode=2 will show all of the states.

### See also
- [icons](https://ref.dm-lang.org/DM/icon/index.md)
- [icon_size var (world)](https://ref.dm-lang.org/world/var/icon_size.md)
- [map_format var (world)](https://ref.dm-lang.org/world/var/map_format.md)
- [Big icons](https://ref.dm-lang.org/notes/big-icons.md)
- [Tiled icons](https://ref.dm-lang.org/notes/tiled-icons.md)