format/3 and format/2 are demanding in what they require as arguments. They throw an exception if there is a mismatch between the placeholders count and the count of elements in Args, or if an element in Args is a mismatch for a placeholder in Msg. This can lead to exceptions at inopportune times, especially if the Msg or Args arguments are built dynamically and code lacks sufficient coverage.

Use this predicate to make format/3 generate ResultString (always an SWI-Prolog string) from Msg and Args. If an exception is thrown from the call to format/3, it is caught and a replacement message is generated in ResultString.

Examples

?- safe_format("Hello ~d",[7889],Result).
Result = "Hello 7889".

?- safe_format("Hello ~d",[hello],Result).
Result = "Exception in format/3 with format string <Hello ~d> and args <hello>".

?- safe_format("Open the ~s.",["pod bay doors","HAL"],Result).
Result = "Exception in format/3 with format string <Open the ~s.> and args <\"pod bay doors\">,<\"HAL\">".

History

1. 2021-01-20 - Code review.
2. 2021-02-04 - Documentation rewritten to pldoc.

More

Arguments:

Msg	- The placeholder-adorned message to print
Args	- The list of parameters that will be inserted into Msg. If not a list, Args is transformed into a list with a single argument.
ResultString	- The result of formatting. Always an SWI-Prolog string. Contains a replacement message in case format/3 threw an exception.

author

- David Tonhofer (ronerycoder@gluino.name)

See also

- format/2, format/3

license

- Zero-Clause BSD / Free Public License 1.0.0 (0BSD)

To be done

- Escape non-printable characters to their hex respresentation.