Simple string template formatter (Dmitry A. Kazakov take note)

Simple string template formatter (Dmitry A. Kazakov take note)

[Victor Porton]

I created a simple string template formatter (no if-then-else, no include, 
just substitution of variables).

Example:

"First phrase: {1}. Second phrase: {2}."

This formatter is suitable for short strings, such as phrases for gettext.

https://github.com/vporton/xml-boiler/blob/master/src/boiler-auxiliary-string_formatter.ads
https://github.com/vporton/xml-boiler/blob/master/src/boiler-auxiliary-string_formatter.adb

My code was not tested!

Dmitry, I ask you to add something like this to your Simple Components.

My program anyway uses Simple Components, so after you implement it, I can 
remove these files from my sources.

I released the files in question both GPLv3 and Apache License 2.0. So feel 
free to use it as a coding example.

-- 
Victor Porton - http://portonvictor.org

Re: Simple string template formatter (Dmitry A. Kazakov take note)

[Victor Porton]

Victor Porton wrote:

> I created a simple string template formatter (no if-then-else, no include,
> just substitution of variables).
> 
> Example:
> 
> "First phrase: {1}. Second phrase: {2}."
> 
> This formatter is suitable for short strings, such as phrases for gettext.
> 
> https://github.com/vporton/xml-boiler/blob/master/src/boiler-auxiliary-string_formatter.ads
> https://github.com/vporton/xml-boiler/blob/master/src/boiler-auxiliary-string_formatter.adb
> 
> My code was not tested!
> 
> Dmitry, I ask you to add something like this to your Simple Components.
> 
> My program anyway uses Simple Components, so after you implement it, I can
> remove these files from my sources.
> 
> I released the files in question both GPLv3 and Apache License 2.0. So
> feel free to use it as a coding example.

I did a small performance improvement in the sources at GitHub.
 
-- 
Victor Porton - http://portonvictor.org

Re: Simple string template formatter (Dmitry A. Kazakov take note)

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On 2017-11-22 21:23, Victor Porton wrote:
> I created a simple string template formatter (no if-then-else, no include,
> just substitution of variables).
> 
> Example:
> 
> "First phrase: {1}. Second phrase: {2}."
> 
> This formatter is suitable for short strings, such as phrases for gettext.
> 
> https://github.com/vporton/xml-boiler/blob/master/src/boiler-auxiliary-string_formatter.ads
> https://github.com/vporton/xml-boiler/blob/master/src/boiler-auxiliary-string_formatter.adb
> 
> My code was not tested!
> 
> Dmitry, I ask you to add something like this to your Simple Components.

Thanks, but I specifically avoid this ugly paradigm. String editing in 
Simple Components deploys a different schema of consequent reading input 
/ writing output string:

    Put
    (  Destination : in out String;
       Pointer     : in out Integer; -- Moving update position
       Value       : Something;
       Field       : Natural   := 0;
       Justify     : Alignment := Left;
       Fill        : Character := ' '
    );

Formatting is one of bad ideas FORTRAN gave us. It is necessarily 
untyped, inefficient and unsafe. Microsoft has more than a dozen 
incarnations of sprintf which is a perfect illustration that the idea is 
just beyond any hope.

I also intentionally avoid so-called "global" operations on strings. 
That is operations taking string as a whole as opposed to "local" 
operations dealing with a string slice. Most "global" operations: find, 
index, substitute, split, translate, tokenize, copy etc are bad. Format 
is a "global" operation. For practical purpose of text processing 
nothing of this is required or makes code clean.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de