[sc-users] Re: string formatting notation

[jamshark70@xxxxxx]

brianlheim wrote
> I hope you believe me when I say I don't believe in making SuperCollider
> more complex for the sake of adding interesting language features. ...
> 
> ... a generic debate of pro-change / anti-change.

Likewise, I'm not arguing against this because I'm opposed to change. I'm
arguing against it because I'm not convinced that its value is so high as to
justify the costs that Scott pointed out.

I *might* be convinced at some point in the future. The current proposal
doesn't quite convince me.


> I've argued strongly for this idea because I wanted it to get a fair
> hearing, not because I'm interesting in making things easier for myself.

Said with tongue in cheek: Motivation doesn't really say anything about
technical merit.

I think I am giving it a fair hearing. I've explained about my criteria for
code readability and given examples where the proposed approach fails pretty
hard to be legible. I've agreed that simple uses of f"" strings are
straightforward to read and stated a concern that the readability argument
falls apart when you scale up to moderately complex cases (and I agree,
syntax highlighting would help, but shouldn't highlighting be an optional
aid? If we need highlighting just to read the durned thing, there's
something wrong). I think this is evaluating the approach on its merits, not
summarily dismissing anything.


> I have motivation to improve the language here, so if you want to suggest
> something you think the community would make better use of, let me know!

To be honest, I'm not grossly dissatisfied with format(). format() could be
improved by making it more like C's sprintf(). We haven't relayed the call
to sprintf() because of the risk of crashing the language with bad input.
Possibly exception handling might help?

Scott's POC replicates PHP's limitation of interpolating only variables, not
expressions. So you couldn't do

f"next x = \(x + 1)"

You would need

var x = something, xPrint;
...
xPrint = x + 1;
f"next x = {xPrint}"

I wouldn't be happy with that restriction. I would be happier supporting
expressions, with the risk of abuse.

hjh




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