carp-docs

Format Strings

Carp as to ways to format strings, fmt and fstr. In this document, we explore both functions in detail.

fmt

fmt allows for more control than fstr, but also requires more knowledge about the data.

(fmt "this is an integer %d and this is a string %s." 1 "hi")

It’s works similarly to printf in C. fmt will check that the amount of arguments and format specifiers in the format string match.

All arguments to fmt must implement the format interface, which is defined as:

(definterface format (Fn [String a] String)

The types are expected to take a format specifier and format according to it. As such, which format specifiers are supported is dependent on the implementation of format on that type. Standard library types expose regular format specifiers as in C.

Please note that, because format is often implemented on top of snprintf and similar functions, using faulty format specifiers might lead to problems.

Also, all fmt format strings must be literals.

fstr

Similarly to fmt, fstr takes a literal string. It uses a simpler interface than fmt, however, in which the expressions are embedded directly into the string and formatted using str. As such, the return types of all expressions in a fstr must implement the str interface.

(def x 1)
(def y "hi")

(fstr "this is an integer {x} and this is the first character of a string {(head x)}")

Any parseable expression may be embedded in a fstr. Expressions are delimited using {}. Any lone } will be interpreted as a literal, whereas literal { need to be escaped as {{.

(fstr "{{}") ; => {}

While possible, it is discouraged to use complicated or even multiline expressions inside fstr.