Re: A shameless plug for string variables

[Hans-Bernhard B. <br...@ph...>]

Ethan Merritt wrote:

> Issues that have been raised regarding the core code (#1043784)

> - The pre-defined function sprintf() requires some familiarity with 
>   C language formats. Harald doesn't like this. I see it as a feature,
>   since the documentation is basically "see man page for sprintf"
> 
> - This new code supersedes the current special case hack for
>    formatting labels:
> 	old:    set label "foo %f %f",var1,var2

Not quite.  It was

	set label "foo %f", var1, " %f", var2

I.e. only one variable per format string, because that way it can use 
gprintf(), and support the gnuplot extension formats like %L/%l, which 
use two format strings to print the same number.

> 	new:    set label sprintf("foo %f %f",var1,var2)
>    If backwards-compatibilty for this specific case is required,
>    that may be a problem.  Right now the old syntax can cause
>    parsing errors, so I disabled it.

Given that this format has been available for only one officially 
released gnuplot version, I have mixed feelings about throwing it out 
again immediately.  On one hand, it's not some time-honoured thing that
people would be mad at us for breaking deliberately, on the other, it 
*is* a brand new feature for some of them, so it's hard to tell how they 
will react if we take it away again so soon.  What parse errors would 
that be, anyway?