> > I don't know very much about *printf in ocaml, but how about Olivier
> > Danvy's approach to sprintf (http://www.brics.dk/RS/98/12/index.html)?
> > It seems safer and faster than ordinary "interpretive" approach.  I'd
> > like to hear what do you (I mean, readers of this mailing list) think
> > about it.
> 
> It's a cute trick.  One drawback is that the format is not a character
> string, but needs to be expressed using special functions and infix
> operators.  On the other hand, it doesn't need the special
> typechecking rules for format strings that we have in OCaml.
> 
> With this special typechecking rules, I don't think Danvy's "partially
> evaluated" printf is any safer than OCaml's "interpreted" printf.

However, it has the significant advantage that formats are user-extensible.

> Also, it doesn't solve (nor makes any worse) the issues with partial
> application of printf and friends that we discussed before.

--FC