Suggestion for a D project/std module: templated format

[Derek Parnell]

On Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:30:17 -0200, Miles wrote:

> Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
>> You mean like std.metastrings.Format?  ;) 
> 
> Definitely no. Like you figured, std.metastrings.Format doesn't generate
> any run-time code. I want something that parses the format string at
> compile-time, and just convert and concatenate the arguments at run-time.
> 
> Also, std.metastrings.Format only supports %s, so it does no
> type-checking and argument counting. If you provide more arguments than
> the format string asks for, they are just concatenated like the original
> format. This is something that helps bugs to pass unnoticed by the
> programmer.
> 
> Definitely not what I want.

For what its worth, I tend to just use '%s' in writefln() calls, and almost
never use any of the other format codes, regardless of the data type being
supplied in the arguments.

   e.g.
    char[] theName;
    int theAge;

    std.stdio.writefln("Hi, my name is %s and I'm %s years old",
                          theName, theAge);

Thus I've chosen the chance of formatting bugs over the ease of coding. It
is no different to saying either ...

    std.stdio.writefln("Hi, my name is %s and I'm %s years old",
                          toString(theName), toString(theAge) );

or

    std.stdio.write("Hi, my name is ", theName, 
                    " and I'm ", theAge, 
                    " years old");

I'm not saying your idea is bad, just that its not going to be universally
wanted.

-- 
Derek
(skype: derek.j.parnell)
Melbourne, Australia
"Justice for David Hicks!"
21/02/2007 10:42:57 AM