Re: Most awesome string metatable hack

[Andrew Starks <andrew.starks@...>]

On Friday, January 31, 2014, steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 9:52 AM, Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@gmail.com> wrote:
> > If the suggestiion that __call for strings should be squandered on simulating
> > printf
>
> That was my thought - so many better ways to use __call (like sub?).
> And ultimately, it's a global modification.  I used to think this was
> harmless, but eventually even simple error messages on string types
> start to get confusing.  Now, if we could do this kind of hack _per
> environment_ (however that be defined) then we're cooking; a person's
> experiments remain private idiosyncrasies.
>
> So I guess my sense of humour didn't boot up fast enough ;)

Hmmm.  Let me try again:

Hey, I thought up a neat hack and after a quick search failed to turn up a prior discussion about it, I thought I'd post it here:

(See above)

I find myself typing `("some %s"):format(var_name) ` so often that this seemed like something worth trying out for a while. 

I don't think that this should be in Lua. I don't miss printf. Your ideas about __call and the string metatable are equally valid and interesting to me. 

Still too (un)funny?

-Andrew