Re: Strings again

Roger Binns wrote:
> Mark Hahn wrote:
>> Are you familiar with Prothon's replacement for % ?  Check out:
>> http://prothon.org/wiki?pagename=String.fmt%28%29
>>
>> It can easily handle the problem you pose here since it offers
>> positional numbering:
>
> I agree that it can help and Python also has something similar.  Heck
> even C has the same positional arguments thing for printf and
> friends.
>
> But programmers never use them.  If a feature is in a language/library
> but no one uses it, does the feature exist? :-)

The programmer doesn't need to use anything.  In your example it is the
format string translator that would use the positional argument, not the
programmer.  The programmer would just stupidly use .fmt(count, total).

This isn't a maybe kind of thing.  Either the language puts the power in the
translator's hands or it doesn't.  I think our proposal does and if I'm
wrong I definitely want to know it.  I don't want to count on any
conventions or leading by example.  I know that doesn't work.