218 lines
7.6 KiB
ReStructuredText
218 lines
7.6 KiB
ReStructuredText
format
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======
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Format is a C++ library that provides printf-like formatting functionality.
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Features
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--------
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* Format string syntax similar to the one used by `str.format
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<http://docs.python.org/2/library/stdtypes.html#str.format>`__ in Python.
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* Support for user-defined types.
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* High speed: performance of the current proof-of-concept implementation
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is close to that of IOStreams (see `Speed tests`_).
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* Small code size both in terms of source code (format consists of a single
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header file and a single source file) and compiled code
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(see `Compile time and code bloat`_).
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* Easy deployment: small self-contained code base, no external dependencies,
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permissive license.
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Examples
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--------
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This prints "Hello, world!" to stdout::
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fmt::Print("Hello, {0}!") << "world";
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Arguments are accessed by position and arguments' indices can be repeated:
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std::string s = str(fmt::Format("{0}{1}{0}") << "abra" << "cad");
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// s == "abracadabra"
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Motivation
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----------
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So why yet another formatting library?
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There are plenty of methods for doing this task, from standard ones like
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the printf family of function and IOStreams to Boost Format library and
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FastFormat. The reason for creating a new library is that every existing
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solution that I found either had serious issues or didn't provide
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all the features I needed.
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Printf
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~~~~~~
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The good thing about printf is that it is very fast and readily available
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being the part of the C standard library. The main drawback is that it
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doesn't support user-defined types. Printf also has safety issues although
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they are mostly solved with `__attribute__ ((format (printf, ...))
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<http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Function-Attributes.html>`__ in GCC.
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There is a POSIX extension that adds positional arguments required for
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`i18n <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_localization>`__
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to printf but it is not a part of C99 and may not be available on some
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platforms.
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IOStreams
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~~~~~~~~~
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The main issue with IOStreams is best illustrated with an example::
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std::cout << std::setprecision(2) << std::fixed << 1.23456 << "\n";
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which is a lot of typing compared to printf::
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printf("%.2f\n", 1.23456);
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Matthew Wilson, the author of FastFormat referred to this situations with
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IOStreams as "chevron hell". IOStreams doesn't support positional arguments
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by design.
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The good part is that IOStreams supports user-defined types and is safe
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although error reporting is awkward.
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Boost Format library
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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This is a very powerful library which supports both printf-like format
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strings and positional arguments. The main its drawback is performance.
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According to various benchmarks it is much slower than other methods
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considered here. Boost Format also has excessive build times and severe
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code bloat issues (see `Benchmarks`_).
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FastFormat
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~~~~~~~~~~
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This is an interesting library which is fast, safe and has positional
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arguments. However it has significant limitations, citing its author:
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Three features that have no hope of being accommodated within the
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current design are:
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* Leading zeros (or any other non-space padding)
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* Octal/hexadecimal encoding
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* Runtime width/alignment specification
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It is also quite big and has a heavy dependency, STLSoft, which might be
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too restrictive for using it in some projects.
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Loki SafeFormat
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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TODO
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Tinyformat
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~~~~~~~~~~
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This library supports printf-like format strings and is very small and
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fast. Unfortunately it doesn't support positional arguments and wrapping
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it in C++98 is somewhat difficult. However if you only need a type-safe
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printf replacement with support for user-defined types, I highly recommend
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this library.
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Benchmarks
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----------
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Compile time and code bloat
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Speed tests
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~~~~~~~~~~~
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The following speed tests results were generated by building
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``tinyformat_test.cpp`` on Ubuntu GNU/Linux 12.10 with
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``g++-4.7.2 -O3 -DSPEED_TEST -DHAVE_FORMAT``, and taking the best of three
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runs. In the test, the format string ``"%0.10f:%04d:%+g:%s:%p:%c:%%\n"`` or
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equivalent is filled 2000000 times with output sent to ``/dev/null``; for
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further details see the `source
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<https://github.com/vitaut/tinyformat/blob/master/tinyformat_test.cpp>`__.
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============== ========
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test name run time
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============== ========
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libc printf 1.26s
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std::ostream 2.02s
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format 2.20s
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tinyformat 2.51s
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boost::format 10.40s
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============== ========
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As you can see boost::format is much slower than the alternative methods; this
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is confirmed by `other tests <http://accu.org/index.php/journals/1539>`__.
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Tinyformat is quite good coming close to IOStreams. Unfortunately tinyformat
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cannot be faster than the IOStreams because it uses them internally.
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Performance of format is close to that of std::ostream but there is a room for
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improvement since format is not based on IOStreams.
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The script ``bloat_test.sh`` from the `tinyformat
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<https://github.com/c42f/tinyformat>`__ repository tests compile time and
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code bloat for nontrivial projects. It generates 100 translation units
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and uses ``printf()`` or its alternative five times in each to simulate
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a medium sized project. The resulting executable size and compile time
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(g++-4.7.2, Ubuntu GNU/Linux 12.10, best of three) is shown in the following
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tables.
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**Non-optimized build**
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====================== ================== ==========================
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test name total compile time executable size (stripped)
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====================== ================== ==========================
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libc printf 2.8s 44K (32K)
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std::ostream 12.9s 84K (60K)
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format 16.0s 152K (128K)
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tinyformat 20.6s 240K (200K)
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boost::format 76.0s 888K (780K)
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====================== ================== ==========================
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**Optimized build (-O3)**
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====================== ================== ==========================
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test name total compile time executable size (stripped)
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====================== ================== ==========================
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libc printf 3.5s 40K (28K)
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std::ostream 14.1s 88K (64K)
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format 25.1s 552K (536K)
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tinyformat 56.3s 200K (164K)
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boost::format 169.4s 1.7M (1.6M)
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====================== ================== ==========================
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Printf and std::ostream win here which is not surprising considering
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that they are included in the standard library. Tinyformat has somewhat
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slower compilation times compared to format. Interestingly optimized
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executable size is smaller with tinyformat then with format and for
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non-optimized build its the other way around. Boost::format has by far
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the largest overheads.
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Running the tests
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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To run the tests you first need to get the format repository with submodules::
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$ git clone --recursive git://github.com/vitaut/format.git
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Then go to the format directory and generate Makefiles with
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`CMake <http://www.cmake.org/>`__::
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$ cd format
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$ cmake .
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Next use the following commands to run the speed test::
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$ make speed_test
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or the bloat test::
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$ make bloat_test
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Acknowledgments
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---------------
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The benchmark section of this readme file and the performance tests are taken
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from the excellent `tinyformat <https://github.com/c42f/tinyformat>`__ library
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written by Chris Foster. Boost Format library is acknowledged transitively
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since it had some influence on tinyformat.
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Some ideas used in the implementation are borrowed from `Loki
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<http://loki-lib.sourceforge.net/>`__ SafeFormat and `Diagnostic API
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<http://clang.llvm.org/doxygen/classclang_1_1Diagnostic.html>`__ in
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`Clang <http://clang.llvm.org/>`__.
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