Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!ists!yunexus!nexus.YorkU.CA!oz
From: oz@nexus.YorkU.CA (Ozan Yigit)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: format [topics from hell, part 1]
Message-ID: <22449@yunexus.YorkU.CA>
Date: 18 Apr 91 16:29:33 GMT
Sender: news@yunexus.YorkU.CA
Organization: York U. Communications Research & Development
Lines: 28

Has anyone in the scheme community given any serious thought to (or
produced a proposal for) a format primitive for some n, R^nRS inclusion?
Existing implementations seem to provide two slightly different version of
this primitive:  one that takes a port argument (and thus like fprintf in
C) and another that does not, and returns the formatted string (and thus
like sprintf in C).

Unfortunately, both versions are called "format".

The former is presumably a carry-over from the past, where destination
parameter specifies where the formatted string should go, and if that is
nowhere flag (nil or #f) the function returns the formatted string, and
thus provides the non-io functionality of the latter.

Over the years, I found the latter to be the most convenient form,
probably because it is a simpler form that only does one thing and one
thing alone. Producing a wrapper around to get the "extended"
functionality of the former is, of course, trivial.

What is better for scheme? A low-level (string-producing) format primitive
[which should probably be called something other than "format", to avoid
confusion], or the classic format-as-io-primitive-that-can-return-strings
approach?

oz
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In seeking the unattainable, simplicity  |  Internet: oz@nexus.yorku.ca
only gets in the way. -- Alan J. Perlis  |  Uucp: utai/utzoo!yunexus!oz