[Include] formatex - Improved "format" function!

[Slice]

Hey,

After seeing a great new feature in sscanf that allows you to create custom specifiers, I figured it was only right to do the same to format and printf!

For example, the following code could be made a lot shorter:

// This will put into "msg" the weapon you were given by a player, and the color of the player's name will match the player's color.

new msg[128], name[MAX_PLAYER_NAME], color;

color = GetPlayerColor(playerid);

GetPlayerName(playerid, name, sizeof(name));

format(msg, sizeof(msg), "You were given a %s by {%06x}%s", g_WeaponNameArray[weapon], color >>> 8, name);

This will do the same thing:

new msg[128];

format(msg, _, "You were given %w by %P", weapon, playerid);

// msg is for example: You were given an M4 by Slice

New specifiers

Specifier

You can create your own specifiers!
You can do this very easily; example of one that puts an upper-case string at %S:
Add this anywhere outside of a function:

// Upper-case string
FormatSpecifier<'S'>(output[], const param[]) {
    for (new i = 0, l = min(sizeof(output), strlen(param)); i < l; i++)
        output[i] = toupper(param[i]);
}

You can now do this:

printf("hello %S!", "world");

// prints: hello WORLD!

If you want an integer, float, or anything else instead of a string you just change it:

// You can call the argument whatever you like, and it can be a string/array:
FormatSpecifier<'A'>(output[], Float:health) { ... }
FormatSpecifier<'B'>(output[], objectid) { ... }
FormatSpecifier<'C'>(output[], playerid) { ... }
FormatSpecifier<'D'>(output[], Text:td) { ... }
FormatSpecifier<'D'>(output[], const string[]) { ... }

Additional notes
Worth mentioning is this is a superset of format, meaning it has exactly all the features of format and those behave like always (the only exception is it's a bit friendlier to packed strings, though %s still doesn't support it).
It actually uses the original native "format" function to do the heavy lifting.

Download

Download: http://pastebin.com/xMAMtB6M

[king_hual]

Kewl, I actually need this.

[kizla]

very nice, i gonna use it for sure

edit: Why you use "GetMaxPlayers" instead of "MAX_PLAYERS" ??

[[HK]Ryder[AN]]

Great.Really Great.Don't know what to say anymore.....

[Slice]

Originally Posted by kizla

very nice, i gonna use it for sure

edit: Why you use "GetMaxPlayers" instead of "MAX_PLAYERS" ??

Well I was using it to see if the player ID was in range. It can't be more than GetMaxPlayers, so that's why I used it.

[iPLEOMAX]

There you go, another awesome release. I'm obviously gonna use it.

[fiki574]

Nice one, Slice!

rep+

Yet another useful release. Nice work Slice(The next Y_Less).

[xkirill]

awesome,thanks

[System64]

fucking awesome man

rep+

edit: shit I can't give rep