Is there a way to get a printf() or sprintf() function in Julia?

[Daniel Carrera]

Hello,

My biggest pet-peeve in Julia is that @sprintf is a macro and not a function. That makes it very annoying to use at times because I cannot put a format string in a variable, or make a wrapper `printf()` function. I don't understand why this is an issue, since several other languages have a printf() function.

Is there any chance that I might see a printf() function in Julia in the future?

I should clarify that I am aware of the "Formatting" module. I do not want to use Python-style formatting strings. I don't like them, I think they are confusing, and other languages that I use have traditional C-style printf() functions, so I want to stick to those. I realize that the "Formatting" module has one function called "sprintf1()" but that function only accepts one parameter, so it is not especially useful.

Cheers,

Daniel.

[Patrick O'Leary]

There are a few issues that get a bit into why this is harder than it looks. I'll start you off at https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/5866, and you can see where things stand now over at https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/10610. If you search around (maybe here, maybe the dev list, don't recall exactly) I think there's at least one mailing list thread as well that has further discussion.

[Tim Holy]

https://github.com/lindahua/Formatting.jl

--Tim

[Daniel Carrera]

Thanks.

On 3 May 2015 at 16:17, Patrick O'Leary <patrick...@gmail.com> wrote:

There are a few issues that get a bit into why this is harder than it looks. I'll start you off at https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/5866, and you can see where things stand now over at https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/10610. If you search around (maybe here, maybe the dev list, don't recall exactly) I think there's at least one mailing list thread as well that has further discussion.

--

When an engineer says that something can't be done, it's a code phrase that means it's not fun to do.

[Daniel Carrera]

Hello Tim,

I appreciate the effort. I know about the Formatting module, but it does not provide printf() or sprintf() -- it only has sprintf1() which only takes 1 parameter -- and I am really not keen on using the Python formatting method. But thanks for the link.

Cheers,

Daniel.

[Dominique Orban]

https://gist.github.com/dpo/11000433