Re: Floating-point formatting string

[Juanma Barranquero]

On 2/14/07, Stuart D. Herring <address@hidden> wrote:

> That doesn't quite explain Vinicius' other examples; in particular,
>
> M-: (format "% 3.3f" 1.2)
> ==> " 1.200"
>
> which has been padded even though it's longer than 3 characters without
> the space.

That's not padding. The flag " " does not mean "pad with spaces", but
"inserts a space for positive numbers". That helps with columns, if
the number can also be negative:

ELISP> (format "%3.3f" 1.2)
"1.200"
ELISP> (format "%3.3f" -1.2)
"-1.200"
ELISP> (format "% 3.3f" 1.2)
" 1.200"
ELISP> (format "% 3.3f" -1.2)
"-1.200"

Space-padding is specified by using no flag:

ELISP> (format "%6.3f" -1.2)
"-1.200"
ELISP> (format "%6.3f" 1.2)
" 1.200"

            Juanma