www.delorie.com/gnu/docs/m4/m4_57.html

search

	Buy GNU books!

GNU macro processor

10.7 Formatted output

Formatted output can be made with format:

format(format-string, ...)

which works much like the C function printf. The first argument is a format string, which can contain `%' specifications, and the expansion of format is the formatted string.

Its use is best described by a few examples:

define(`foo', `The brown fox jumped over the lazy dog') => format(`The string "%s" is %d characters long', foo, len(foo)) =>The string "The brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" is 38 characters long

Using the forloop macro defined in See section 5.3 Loops and recursion, this example shows how format can be used to produce tabular output.

forloop(`i', 1, 10, `format(`%6d squared is %10d ', i, eval(i**2))') => 1 squared is 1 => 2 squared is 4 => 3 squared is 9 => 4 squared is 16 => 5 squared is 25 => 6 squared is 36 => 7 squared is 49 => 8 squared is 64 => 9 squared is 81 => 10 squared is 100

The builtin format is modeled after the ANSI C `printf' function, and supports the normal `%' specifiers: `c', `s', `d', `o', `x', `X', `u', `e', `E' and `f'; it supports field widths and precisions, and the modifiers `+', `-', ` ', `0', `#', `h' and `l'. For more details on the functioning of printf, see the C Library Manual.