Re: printf is a crappy language in a crappy language (was Re: [OT] Lua community and Go language)

[Sean Conner <sean@...>]

It was thus said that the Great Coda Highland once stated:
> 
> C++'s << is nice, but doesn't address reordering parameters for localization.

  I attempted to solve this problem (some fifteen years ago) by writing my
own printf() replacment in C.  A typical call would look like [1]:

	PrintFormat(
		"i $ $",
		"Hi, my first name is %b and my last name is %c and I am %a years old\n",
		44,
		"Sean",
		"Conner"
	);

  The first parameter is the "little language"---each space separated group
had type information ("i" for integer, "$" for string [3], "f" for float,
etc) and was used to collect the arguments after the format string.  Of
course, being a custom format string and making no assumptions on the C
compiler, type checking was lacking, to say the least.  You could also
specify field widths, padding, etc, but I never did find a satisfactory
method to do this, and consequently, I *always* had to look up how to
specify widths, padding, etc.  

  The second parameter is the format string.  As you can see, you reference
variables per argument position ("%a" being the first variable argument,
"%b" being the second one, etc) and they could be reused in a string.  This
provided a way to recode the format string without having to recode the
entire call site:

	"Subject: %c, %b Age: %a\n"

  Furthermore, I could include comments:

	"Subject: %(lastname)c, %(firstname)b Age: %a\n"

which I used occasionally, but not enough to justify adding the feature [4].
I only had a few small projects use my printf() replacement, and after a few
years of never bothing to use it for everything I did [5] I eventually
removed the code and went back to using printf().

  -spc (It's not an easy problem)

[1]	Excuse the CamelCaps---it was a phase I was going through at the
	time [2].

[2]	Having come off quite a bit of development for AmigaOS, which made
	extensive use of CamelCapFunctionNames.  

[3]	Shades of BASIC.

[4]	This was part of an idea I had on supporting localization of
	programs, but the idea involved changes to how the compiler
	generates strings, and how the linker dealt with those changes.  I
	still think it's a good idea but I don't have the gumption to apply
	the ideas to the GNU C development chain and trying to get upstream
	to accept the changes.

[5]	Partly because I wrote my own file handling routines, which,
	frankly, were a nightmare to use.