[m-dev.] Here's an idea.

[Peter Schachte]

On Tue, 9 Sep 1997, Fergus Henderson wrote:

> > Also, C style formatting strings are pretty important, as almost every
> > programmer is familiar with them. You would need to provide something 
> > _significantly_ better to get people to change (I think in this case,
> > "worse is better" is appropriate).
> 
> Yes, that's a good point.

I'm not so sure.  C-style format strings have two gaping flaws:  the lack of
static type checking (unless you do some really fancy specialized type
checking in the compiler), and the lack of extensibility.  I also find the
separation of the format from the data to be at best a misfeature, as it
requires an unnecessary (and error-prone) coordination of items, but I guess
that's a matter of taste. 


-Peter Schachte      URL:  http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~pets/
pets at cs.mu.OZ.AU     PGP:  finger pets at 128.250.37.150 for key
    Do insects spend hours demammaling their programs?