String.format

Available since: Gideros 2011.6

Description

Returns a formatted version of its variable number of arguments following the description given in its first argument (which must be a string). The format string follows the same rules as the printf family of standard C functions. The only differences are that the options/modifiers *, l, L, n, p, and h are not supported and that there is an extra option, q. The q option formats a string in a form suitable to be safely read back by the Lua interpreter: the string is written between double quotes, and all double quotes, newlines, embedded zeros, and backslashes in the string are correctly escaped when written. For instance, the call

    `string.format('%q', 'a string with "quotes" and \n new line')`

will produce the string: 

    `"a string with \"quotes\" and \
     new line"`

The options c, d, E, e, f, g, G, i, o, u, X, and x all expect a number as argument, whereas q and s expect a string. 

This function does not accept string values containing embedded zeros, except as arguments to the q option.

 string.format(formatstring,e1,e2,...)

'formatstring: (string) the string defining the format of the output '
e1: (string) first parameter for the format string optional
e2: (string) second parameter to format string optional
...: (multiple) more optional parameters for format string optional