Comment by acqq | Hacker News Reader

Comment by acqq | Hacker News Reader

Regarding the printf (pre)history see my old comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3964475

printf is based on the idea implemented as early as 1956, next year it will be 60 years since!

   1956: Fortran I:
            PRINT 1, X
         1  FORMAT (F10.2)

Fortran was invented by John Backus and there was already a finished compiler in 1956.

I/O in the first Fortran, I believe including the FN.M syntax, was implemented by Roy Nutt, also one obvious genius:

http://www.cap-lore.com/stories/Assembler.html

"There were a few pages of description of a new assembler format for the IBM 704 that differed considerably from the NYAP that we were using." (That) "704 assembler, originally called SAP, was written in its own language by Roy Nutt."

That's very interesting, but other than in name not related to the article.

If you didn't read it I would recommend you do - it's possibly one of the most interesting and reflective things I've ever read about programming as a profession.

Consider it an addition to the type of the programmer: the one who stays by the original meanings of the names. Who still links to the Fortran libraries, writes mostly C and fondly remembers APL.

Shame that we're just nearing precompiled xprintf statements. It's so wasteful and slow to keep scanning same string for printing instructions at runtime. And very bug prone.

Common Lisp had precompiled printing/formatting for ever: FORMAT. E.g. FORMAT is a macro.

And Idris even enables a type-safe version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVBck2Zngjo

So if you mismatch the types you'll get a compile time error instead of a run time error.

That's pretty cool. Looking for the text version of it led me to another one more accessible to average programmer:

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/159910/Extremely-Efficie...

F# also supports a typesafe printf format notation.

http://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/posts/printf/

To be clear, FORMAT is a function possibly with an associated compiler macro to expand constant format strings into more efficient code inline.

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