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From: Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Algol 68 - formatting with fixed point format
Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2025 02:14:28 +0200
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On 24.08.2025 01:27, Andy Walker wrote:
> On 23/08/2025 18:28, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
>> [...]
> 
>     Agreed completely.  But the way transput is done in the
> Revised Report is a botch. 

(I've never read this standards paper on transput.)

> "FORMAT" adds around 50% to the A68
> syntax charts [eg from one page (the Watt-Peck-Sintzoff chart) to
> a page and a half].  We could get 95% of the power with no new
> syntax at all by moving to a model more like C. 

Well, C's model is very primitive compared to Algol 68's.
There's really interesting things you can do with that
FORMAT "sub-language".

> [...]
> 
>> [...]
> 
>     I've tended to go the other way of declaring some new
> operators in my code to get better formatting. 

Well, back to Algol-like (less cryptic than "C") languages
I'm now used to even more procedure-oriented structuring,
so that I'm writing hierarchies of print_xyz procedures
that organizes the higher level structures of the data.

The lower-level structuring, though, shall be part of the
print framework/library or the language. And having here a
"gap" (as I perceived it) just hurts [me].

> FORMATs don't
> mix well with ordinary string-handling code IMHO.  I know how
> to use FORMATs, I just don't like them.

I've never considered FORMAT as (or compared it to) string
handling; these always were two completely different things.
I learned to appreciate it when I got aware that it's an
own special purpose language embedded as first class item
in that language. C's printf format is also an interpreted
language, but much more primitive than Algol 68's. C's is
also cryptic but simpler and thus more easily manageable.

Janis