On 01/25/2011 02:12 PM, Didier Verna wrote:
Daniel Weinreb wrote:
Yes, we use it heavily, mainly for date/time processing, which can be very complicated when you're dealing with time zones and such. Example:
(list :departure-time (format nil "~/zul%ISO8601/" departure-time-zul)
OK, but does it really buy you anything, compared to just calling a specific function directly? Your examples all seem to contain only one format directive.
Even a single directive is helpful if it's short enough. I try to mitigate some of the more cumbersome aspects of using ~// by defining a single generic function, format-value, that has a ~// compatible argument list. There is an in-lined wrapper function, f, that resides in a package that has a single letter nickname (of course that invites other problems). Anyway, I end up using ~/p:f/ in a lot of format control strings.
Matt