Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Formatted Output Revisited
Message-ID: <1989Oct16.230058.26368@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <738@tuvie>
Date: Mon, 16 Oct 89 23:00:58 GMT

In article <738@tuvie> inst182@tuvie (Inst.f.Techn.Informatik) writes:
>	+ no optimization can be done; if you want to output
>	  even a trivial thing like form("d=%d\n",d) and you       
>	  have to parse the output string over and over again.

Why?  All it takes is a compiler that knows about library functions to
optimize this.  (No, this is not "contrary to the spirit of C"; there
are already C compilers that do it, and ANSI C has blessed it.)

>	+ since form() is declared as somthing like 
>		char *form(char *format, ...);
>	  no typechecking can be done...

Again, dunno about C++, but there are C compilers that type-check calls
to printf(), so form() should be checkable.

>	+ Extending form to handle user-defined types is impossible.

This is *probably* true.
-- 
A bit of tolerance is worth a  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
megabyte of flaming.           | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu