### Name: sprintf
### Title: Use C-style String Formatting Commands
### Aliases: sprintf gettextf
### Keywords: print character

### ** Examples

## be careful with the format: most things in R are floats
## only integer-valued reals get coerced to integer.

sprintf("%s is %f feet tall\n", "Sven", 7.1)      # OK
try(sprintf("%s is %i feet tall\n", "Sven", 7.1)) # not OK
    sprintf("%s is %i feet tall\n", "Sven", 7  )  # OK

## use a literal % :

sprintf("%.0f%% said yes (out of a sample of size %.0f)", 66.666, 3)

## various formats of pi :

sprintf("%f", pi)
sprintf("%.3f", pi)
sprintf("%1.0f", pi)
sprintf("%5.1f", pi)
sprintf("%05.1f", pi)
sprintf("%+f", pi)
sprintf("% f", pi)
sprintf("%-10f", pi) # left justified
sprintf("%e", pi)
sprintf("%E", pi)
sprintf("%g", pi)
sprintf("%g",   1e6 * pi) # -> exponential
sprintf("%.9g", 1e6 * pi) # -> "fixed"
sprintf("%G", 1e-6 * pi)

## no truncation:
sprintf("%1.f",101)

## re-use one argument three times, show difference between %x and %X
xx <- sprintf("%1$d %1$x %1$X", 0:15)
xx <- matrix(xx, dimnames=list(rep("", 16), "%d%x%X"))
noquote(format(xx, justify="right"))

## More sophisticated:

sprintf("min 10-char string '%10s'",
        c("a", "ABC", "and an even longer one"))

n <- 1:18
sprintf(paste("e with %2d digits = %.",n,"g",sep=""), n, exp(1))

## Using arguments out of order
sprintf("second %2$1.0f, first %1$5.2f, third %3$1.0f", pi, 2, 3)

## Using asterisk for width or precision
sprintf("precision %.*f, width '%*.3f'", 3, pi, 8, pi)

## Asterisk and argument re-use, 'e' example reiterated:
sprintf("e with %1$2d digits = %2$.*1$g", n, exp(1))

## re-cycle arguments
sprintf("%s %d", "test", 1:3)

## binary output showing rounding/representation errors
x <- seq(0, 1.0, 0.1); y <- c(0,.1,.2,.3,.4,.5,.6,.7,.8,.9,1)
cbind(x, sprintf("%a", x), sprintf("%a", y))