fmt-0.6.1.2: A new formatting library
A new formatting library that tries to be simple to understand while still being powerful and providing more convenience features than other libraries (like functions for pretty-printing maps and lists, or a function for printing arbitrary datatypes using generics).
A comparison with other libraries:
-
printf
(fromText.Printf
) takes a formatting string and uses some type tricks to accept the rest of the arguments polyvariadically. It's very concise, but there are some drawbacks – it can't produceText
(you'd have toT.pack
it every time) and it doesn't warn you at compile-time if you pass wrong arguments or not enough of them. -
text-format
takes a
formatting string with curly braces denoting places where arguments
would be substituted (the arguments themselves are provided via a
tuple). If you want to apply formatting to some of the arguments, you
have to use one of the provided formatters. Like
printf
, it can fail at runtime, but at least the formatters are first-class (and you can add new ones). -
formatting
takes a
formatting template consisting of pieces of strings interleaved with
formatters; this ensures that arguments always match their placeholders.
formatting
provides lots of formatters and generally seems to be the most popular formatting library here. Unfortunately, at least in my experience writing new formatters can be awkward and people sometimes have troubles understanding howformatting
works. -
fmt
(i.e. this library)
provides formatters that are ordinary functions, and a bunch of operators
for concatenating formatted strings; those operators also do automatic
conversion. There are some convenience formatters which aren't present in
formatting
(like ones for formatting maps, lists, converting to base64, etc). Some find the operator syntax annoying, while others like it.