Functions for formatted output.
fprintf
and related functions format their arguments according to the given format string. The format string is a character string which contains two types of objects: plain characters, which are simply copied to the output channel, and conversion specifications, each of which causes conversion and printing of arguments.
Conversion specifications have the following form:
% [flags] [width] [.precision] type
In short, a conversion specification consists in the %
character, followed by optional modifiers and a type which is made of one or two characters.
The types and their meanings are:
d
, i
: convert an integer argument to signed decimal.u
, n
, l
, L
, or N
: convert an integer argument to unsigned decimal. Warning: n
, l
, L
, and N
are used for scanf
, and should not be used for printf
.x
: convert an integer argument to unsigned hexadecimal, using lowercase letters.X
: convert an integer argument to unsigned hexadecimal, using uppercase letters.o
: convert an integer argument to unsigned octal.s
: insert a string argument.S
: convert a string argument to OCaml syntax (double quotes, escapes).c
: insert a character argument.C
: convert a character argument to OCaml syntax (single quotes, escapes).f
: convert a floating-point argument to decimal notation, in the style dddd.ddd
.F
: convert a floating-point argument to OCaml syntax (dddd.
or dddd.ddd
or d.ddd e+-dd
).e
or E
: convert a floating-point argument to decimal notation, in the style d.ddd e+-dd
(mantissa and exponent).g
or G
: convert a floating-point argument to decimal notation, in style f
or e
, E
(whichever is more compact). Moreover, any trailing zeros are removed from the fractional part of the result and the decimal-point character is removed if there is no fractional part remaining.h
or H
: convert a floating-point argument to hexadecimal notation, in the style 0xh.hhhh e+-dd
(hexadecimal mantissa, exponent in decimal and denotes a power of 2).B
: convert a boolean argument to the string true or falseb
: convert a boolean argument (deprecated; do not use in new programs).ld
, li
, lu
, lx
, lX
, lo
: convert an int32 argument to the format specified by the second letter (decimal, hexadecimal, etc).nd
, ni
, nu
, nx
, nX
, no
: convert a nativeint argument to the format specified by the second letter.Ld
, Li
, Lu
, Lx
, LX
, Lo
: convert an int64 argument to the format specified by the second letter.a
: user-defined printer. Take two arguments and apply the first one to outchan (the current output channel) and to the second argument. The first argument must therefore have type out_channel -> 'b -> unit
and the second 'b
. The output produced by the function is inserted in the output of fprintf
at the current point.t
: same as %a
, but take only one argument (with type out_channel -> unit
) and apply it to outchan
.{ fmt %}
: convert a format string argument to its type digest. The argument must have the same type as the internal format string fmt
.( fmt %)
: format string substitution. Take a format string argument and substitute it to the internal format string fmt to print following arguments. The argument must have the same type as the internal format string fmt.!
: take no argument and flush the output.%
: take no argument and output one %
character.@
: take no argument and output one @
character.,
: take no argument and output nothing: a no-op delimiter for conversion specifications.The optional flags
are:
-
: left-justify the output (default is right justification).0
: for numerical conversions, pad with zeroes instead of spaces.+
: for signed numerical conversions, prefix number with a +
sign if positive.space: for signed numerical conversions, prefix number with a space if positive. #
: request an alternate formatting style for the hexadecimal and octal integer types (x
, X
, o
, lx
, lX
, lo
, Lx
, LX
, Lo
).The optional width
is an integer indicating the minimal width of the result. For instance, %6d
prints an integer, prefixing it with spaces to fill at least 6 characters.
The optional precision
is a dot .
followed by an integer indicating how many digits follow the decimal point in the %f
, %e
, and %E
conversions. For instance, %.4f
prints a float
with 4 fractional digits.
The integer in a width
or precision
can also be specified as *
, in which case an extra integer argument is taken to specify the corresponding width
or precision
. This integer argument precedes immediately the argument to print. For instance, %.*f
prints a float with as many fractional digits as the value of the argument given before the float.
val ifprintf : 'a -> ('r , 'a , 'c , unit) Stdlib.format4 -> 'r
Same as fprintf
, but does not print anything. Useful for ignoring some material when conditionally printing.
val sprintf : ('r , unit, string) Stdlib.format -> 'r
Same as fprintf
, but instead of printing on an output channel, returns a string.
val bprintf : Base__.Import0.Caml.Buffer .t -> ('r , Base__.Import0.Caml.Buffer .t, unit) Stdlib.format -> 'r
Same as fprintf
, but instead of printing on an output channel, appends the formatted arguments to the given extensible buffer.
val ksprintf : (string -> 'a ) -> ('r , unit, string, 'a ) Stdlib.format4 -> 'r
Same as sprintf
, but instead of returning the string, passes it to the first argument.
val kbprintf : (Base__.Import0.Caml.Buffer .t -> 'a ) -> Base__.Import0.Caml.Buffer .t -> ('r , Base__.Import0.Caml.Buffer .t, unit, 'a ) Stdlib.format4 -> 'r
Same as bprintf
, but instead of returning immediately, passes the buffer, after printing, to its first argument.
These functions have a polymorphic return type, since they do not return. Naively, this doesn't mix well with variadic functions: if you define, say,
let f fmt = ksprintf (fun s -> failwith s) fmt
then you find that f "%d" : int -> 'a
, as you'd expect, and f "%d" 7 : 'a
. The problem with this is that 'a
unifies with (say) int -> 'b
, so f "%d" 7 4
is not a type error -- the 4
is simply ignored.
To mitigate this problem, these functions all take a final unit parameter. These rarely arise as formatting positional parameters (they can do with e.g. "%a", but not in a useful way) so they serve as an effective signpost for "end of formatting arguments".
val failwithf : ('r , unit, string, unit -> _ ) Stdlib.format4 -> 'r
Raises Failure
.
val invalid_argf : ('r , unit, string, unit -> _ ) Stdlib.format4 -> 'r
Raises Invalid_arg
.