[REBOL] Enhancment Request/Suggestion
From: joel:neely:fedex at: 19-Sep-2000 17:25
Within the recent benchmark discussion, Gabriele made a comment
which reminded me of a suggestion I have been meaning to make
for some time.
Almost every real application I write has a need for at least a
rudimentary level of output formatting. Examples include:
- truncating strings and/or padding strings with trailing blanks
to a fixed length,
- converting numerical values to string values, padding with
leading blanks to a fixed length,
- formatting decimal values as strings, complete with the usual
sorts of leading-blank, trailing-zero, fractional-rounding
string thrashing,
- combining all of the above with interpolation into literal
string data to form an entire message or output line.
I understand/assume that the underlying REBOL infrastructure is
written in C.
Therefore...
Please consider exposing an interface to printf-style formatting
of data values into text. Let me quickly say that I don't view
printf as anything NEAR the acme of readability or elegance, but
it has a few offsetting benefits to compensate for its offputting
appearance:
1) It's already in C, which I assume means it could be exposed
in REBOL more quickly than a completely new formatting scheme
could be conceived, designed, and developed. I certainly
understand that RT has MANY priorities and demands on your
time and personnel; I view this need as basic enough to
justify considering a bit of a quick-and-dirty solution (and
printf ain't hospital sanitary...)
2) It could serve as the underlying mechanism supporting nicer
interfaces that could be build above as mezzanine functions.
3) A large portion of professional programmers have been exposed
(in the epidemiological sense ;-) to C, and therefore would
require almost no training or documentation to be able to
use printf-style format strings.
4) It could provide a "standard" means of bridging the need until
RT has the time to build a more elegant, REBOL-style solution.
(Here I use "standard" in the sense of "available to everyone
using REBOL", without the need to write one's own or go find
some code written by someone else.)
-jn-