summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/src/fmt/README.rst
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'src/fmt/README.rst')
-rw-r--r--src/fmt/README.rst512
1 files changed, 512 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/src/fmt/README.rst b/src/fmt/README.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..48da9ed3b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/fmt/README.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,512 @@
+{fmt}
+=====
+
+.. image:: https://travis-ci.org/fmtlib/fmt.png?branch=master
+ :target: https://travis-ci.org/fmtlib/fmt
+
+.. image:: https://ci.appveyor.com/api/projects/status/ehjkiefde6gucy1v
+ :target: https://ci.appveyor.com/project/vitaut/fmt
+
+.. image:: https://oss-fuzz-build-logs.storage.googleapis.com/badges/libfmt.svg
+ :alt: fmt is continuously fuzzed att oss-fuzz
+ :target: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/oss-fuzz/issues/list?colspec=ID%20Type%20Component%20Status%20Proj%20Reported%20Owner%20Summary&q=proj%3Dlibfmt&can=1
+
+.. image:: https://img.shields.io/badge/stackoverflow-fmt-blue.svg
+ :alt: Ask questions at StackOverflow with the tag fmt
+ :target: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/fmt
+
+**{fmt}** is an open-source formatting library for C++.
+It can be used as a safe and fast alternative to (s)printf and iostreams.
+
+`Documentation <https://fmt.dev/latest/>`__
+
+Q&A: ask questions on `StackOverflow with the tag fmt <https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/fmt>`_.
+
+Features
+--------
+
+* Replacement-based `format API <https://fmt.dev/dev/api.html>`_ with
+ positional arguments for localization.
+* `Format string syntax <https://fmt.dev/dev/syntax.html>`_ similar to the one
+ of `str.format <https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#str.format>`_
+ in Python.
+* Safe `printf implementation
+ <https://fmt.dev/latest/api.html#printf-formatting>`_ including
+ the POSIX extension for positional arguments.
+* Implementation of `C++20 std::format <https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/utility/format>`__.
+* Support for user-defined types.
+* High performance: faster than common standard library implementations of
+ `printf <https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/io/c/fprintf>`_ and
+ iostreams. See `Speed tests`_ and `Fast integer to string conversion in C++
+ <http://zverovich.net/2013/09/07/integer-to-string-conversion-in-cplusplus.html>`_.
+* Small code size both in terms of source code (the minimum configuration
+ consists of just three header files, ``core.h``, ``format.h`` and
+ ``format-inl.h``) and compiled code. See `Compile time and code bloat`_.
+* Reliability: the library has an extensive set of `unit tests
+ <https://github.com/fmtlib/fmt/tree/master/test>`_ and is continuously fuzzed.
+* Safety: the library is fully type safe, errors in format strings can be
+ reported at compile time, automatic memory management prevents buffer overflow
+ errors.
+* Ease of use: small self-contained code base, no external dependencies,
+ permissive MIT `license
+ <https://github.com/fmtlib/fmt/blob/master/LICENSE.rst>`_
+* `Portability <https://fmt.dev/latest/index.html#portability>`_ with
+ consistent output across platforms and support for older compilers.
+* Clean warning-free codebase even on high warning levels
+ (``-Wall -Wextra -pedantic``).
+* Support for wide strings.
+* Optional header-only configuration enabled with the ``FMT_HEADER_ONLY`` macro.
+
+See the `documentation <https://fmt.dev/latest/>`_ for more details.
+
+Examples
+--------
+
+Print ``Hello, world!`` to ``stdout``:
+
+.. code:: c++
+
+ fmt::print("Hello, {}!", "world"); // Python-like format string syntax
+ fmt::printf("Hello, %s!", "world"); // printf format string syntax
+
+Format a string and use positional arguments:
+
+.. code:: c++
+
+ std::string s = fmt::format("I'd rather be {1} than {0}.", "right", "happy");
+ // s == "I'd rather be happy than right."
+
+Check a format string at compile time:
+
+.. code:: c++
+
+ // test.cc
+ #include <fmt/format.h>
+ std::string s = format(FMT_STRING("{2}"), 42);
+
+.. code::
+
+ $ c++ -Iinclude -std=c++14 test.cc
+ ...
+ test.cc:4:17: note: in instantiation of function template specialization 'fmt::v5::format<S, int>' requested here
+ std::string s = format(FMT_STRING("{2}"), 42);
+ ^
+ include/fmt/core.h:778:19: note: non-constexpr function 'on_error' cannot be used in a constant expression
+ ErrorHandler::on_error(message);
+ ^
+ include/fmt/format.h:2226:16: note: in call to '&checker.context_->on_error(&"argument index out of range"[0])'
+ context_.on_error("argument index out of range");
+ ^
+
+Use {fmt} as a safe portable replacement for ``itoa``
+(`godbolt <https://godbolt.org/g/NXmpU4>`_):
+
+.. code:: c++
+
+ fmt::memory_buffer buf;
+ format_to(buf, "{}", 42); // replaces itoa(42, buffer, 10)
+ format_to(buf, "{:x}", 42); // replaces itoa(42, buffer, 16)
+ // access the string with to_string(buf) or buf.data()
+
+Format objects of user-defined types via a simple `extension API
+<https://fmt.dev/latest/api.html#formatting-user-defined-types>`_:
+
+.. code:: c++
+
+ #include "fmt/format.h"
+
+ struct date {
+ int year, month, day;
+ };
+
+ template <>
+ struct fmt::formatter<date> {
+ constexpr auto parse(format_parse_context& ctx) { return ctx.begin(); }
+
+ template <typename FormatContext>
+ auto format(const date& d, FormatContext& ctx) {
+ return format_to(ctx.out(), "{}-{}-{}", d.year, d.month, d.day);
+ }
+ };
+
+ std::string s = fmt::format("The date is {}", date{2012, 12, 9});
+ // s == "The date is 2012-12-9"
+
+Create your own functions similar to `format
+<https://fmt.dev/latest/api.html#format>`_ and
+`print <https://fmt.dev/latest/api.html#print>`_
+which take arbitrary arguments (`godbolt <https://godbolt.org/g/MHjHVf>`_):
+
+.. code:: c++
+
+ // Prints formatted error message.
+ void vreport_error(const char* format, fmt::format_args args) {
+ fmt::print("Error: ");
+ fmt::vprint(format, args);
+ }
+ template <typename... Args>
+ void report_error(const char* format, const Args & ... args) {
+ vreport_error(format, fmt::make_format_args(args...));
+ }
+
+ report_error("file not found: {}", path);
+
+Note that ``vreport_error`` is not parameterized on argument types which can
+improve compile times and reduce code size compared to a fully parameterized
+version.
+
+Benchmarks
+----------
+
+Speed tests
+~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+================= ============= ===========
+Library Method Run Time, s
+================= ============= ===========
+libc printf 1.04
+libc++ std::ostream 3.05
+{fmt} 6.1.1 fmt::print 0.75
+Boost Format 1.67 boost::format 7.24
+Folly Format folly::format 2.23
+================= ============= ===========
+
+{fmt} is the fastest of the benchmarked methods, ~35% faster than ``printf``.
+
+The above results were generated by building ``tinyformat_test.cpp`` on macOS
+10.14.6 with ``clang++ -O3 -DSPEED_TEST -DHAVE_FORMAT``, and taking the best of
+three runs. In the test, the format string ``"%0.10f:%04d:%+g:%s:%p:%c:%%\n"``
+or equivalent is filled 2,000,000 times with output sent to ``/dev/null``; for
+further details refer to the `source
+<https://github.com/fmtlib/format-benchmark/blob/master/tinyformat_test.cpp>`_.
+
+{fmt} is 10x faster than ``std::ostringstream`` and ``sprintf`` on floating-point
+formatting (`dtoa-benchmark <https://github.com/fmtlib/dtoa-benchmark>`_)
+and as fast as `double-conversion <https://github.com/google/double-conversion>`_:
+
+.. image:: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/576385/69767160-cdaca400-112f-11ea-9fc5-347c9f83caad.png
+ :target: https://fmt.dev/unknown_mac64_clang10.0.html
+
+Compile time and code bloat
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+The script `bloat-test.py
+<https://github.com/fmtlib/format-benchmark/blob/master/bloat-test.py>`_
+from `format-benchmark <https://github.com/fmtlib/format-benchmark>`_
+tests compile time and code bloat for nontrivial projects.
+It generates 100 translation units and uses ``printf()`` or its alternative
+five times in each to simulate a medium sized project. The resulting
+executable size and compile time (Apple LLVM version 8.1.0 (clang-802.0.42),
+macOS Sierra, best of three) is shown in the following tables.
+
+**Optimized build (-O3)**
+
+============= =============== ==================== ==================
+Method Compile Time, s Executable size, KiB Stripped size, KiB
+============= =============== ==================== ==================
+printf 2.6 29 26
+printf+string 16.4 29 26
+iostreams 31.1 59 55
+{fmt} 19.0 37 34
+Boost Format 91.9 226 203
+Folly Format 115.7 101 88
+============= =============== ==================== ==================
+
+As you can see, {fmt} has 60% less overhead in terms of resulting binary code
+size compared to iostreams and comes pretty close to ``printf``. Boost Format
+and Folly Format have the largest overheads.
+
+``printf+string`` is the same as ``printf`` but with extra ``<string>``
+include to measure the overhead of the latter.
+
+**Non-optimized build**
+
+============= =============== ==================== ==================
+Method Compile Time, s Executable size, KiB Stripped size, KiB
+============= =============== ==================== ==================
+printf 2.2 33 30
+printf+string 16.0 33 30
+iostreams 28.3 56 52
+{fmt} 18.2 59 50
+Boost Format 54.1 365 303
+Folly Format 79.9 445 430
+============= =============== ==================== ==================
+
+``libc``, ``lib(std)c++`` and ``libfmt`` are all linked as shared libraries to
+compare formatting function overhead only. Boost Format is a
+header-only library so it doesn't provide any linkage options.
+
+Running the tests
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Please refer to `Building the library`__ for the instructions on how to build
+the library and run the unit tests.
+
+__ https://fmt.dev/latest/usage.html#building-the-library
+
+Benchmarks reside in a separate repository,
+`format-benchmarks <https://github.com/fmtlib/format-benchmark>`_,
+so to run the benchmarks you first need to clone this repository and
+generate Makefiles with CMake::
+
+ $ git clone --recursive https://github.com/fmtlib/format-benchmark.git
+ $ cd format-benchmark
+ $ cmake .
+
+Then you can run the speed test::
+
+ $ make speed-test
+
+or the bloat test::
+
+ $ make bloat-test
+
+Projects using this library
+---------------------------
+
+* `0 A.D. <https://play0ad.com/>`_: A free, open-source, cross-platform
+ real-time strategy game
+
+* `AMPL/MP <https://github.com/ampl/mp>`_:
+ An open-source library for mathematical programming
+
+* `AvioBook <https://www.aviobook.aero/en>`_: A comprehensive aircraft
+ operations suite
+
+* `Celestia <https://celestia.space/>`_: Real-time 3D visualization of space
+
+* `Ceph <https://ceph.com/>`_: A scalable distributed storage system
+
+* `ccache <https://ccache.dev/>`_: A compiler cache
+
+* `CUAUV <http://cuauv.org/>`_: Cornell University's autonomous underwater
+ vehicle
+
+* `Drake <https://drake.mit.edu/>`_: A planning, control, and analysis toolbox
+ for nonlinear dynamical systems (MIT)
+
+* `Envoy <https://lyft.github.io/envoy/>`_: C++ L7 proxy and communication bus
+ (Lyft)
+
+* `FiveM <https://fivem.net/>`_: a modification framework for GTA V
+
+* `Folly <https://github.com/facebook/folly>`_: Facebook open-source library
+
+* `HarpyWar/pvpgn <https://github.com/pvpgn/pvpgn-server>`_:
+ Player vs Player Gaming Network with tweaks
+
+* `KBEngine <https://kbengine.org/>`_: An open-source MMOG server engine
+
+* `Keypirinha <https://keypirinha.com/>`_: A semantic launcher for Windows
+
+* `Kodi <https://kodi.tv/>`_ (formerly xbmc): Home theater software
+
+* `Knuth <https://kth.cash/>`_: High-performance Bitcoin full-node
+
+* `Microsoft Verona <https://github.com/microsoft/verona>`_: Research programming language for concurrent ownership
+
+* `MongoDB <https://mongodb.com/>`_: Distributed document database
+
+* `MongoDB Smasher <https://github.com/duckie/mongo_smasher>`_: A small tool to
+ generate randomized datasets
+
+* `OpenSpace <https://openspaceproject.com/>`_: An open-source
+ astrovisualization framework
+
+* `PenUltima Online (POL) <https://www.polserver.com/>`_:
+ An MMO server, compatible with most Ultima Online clients
+
+* `PyTorch <https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch>`_: An open-source machine
+ learning library
+
+* `quasardb <https://www.quasardb.net/>`_: A distributed, high-performance,
+ associative database
+
+* `readpe <https://bitbucket.org/sys_dev/readpe>`_: Read Portable Executable
+
+* `redis-cerberus <https://github.com/HunanTV/redis-cerberus>`_: A Redis cluster
+ proxy
+
+* `redpanda <https://vectorized.io/redpanda>`_: A 10x faster Kafka® replacement
+ for mission critical systems written in C++
+
+* `rpclib <http://rpclib.net/>`_: A modern C++ msgpack-RPC server and client
+ library
+
+* `Salesforce Analytics Cloud
+ <https://www.salesforce.com/analytics-cloud/overview/>`_:
+ Business intelligence software
+
+* `Scylla <https://www.scylladb.com/>`_: A Cassandra-compatible NoSQL data store
+ that can handle 1 million transactions per second on a single server
+
+* `Seastar <http://www.seastar-project.org/>`_: An advanced, open-source C++
+ framework for high-performance server applications on modern hardware
+
+* `spdlog <https://github.com/gabime/spdlog>`_: Super fast C++ logging library
+
+* `Stellar <https://www.stellar.org/>`_: Financial platform
+
+* `Touch Surgery <https://www.touchsurgery.com/>`_: Surgery simulator
+
+* `TrinityCore <https://github.com/TrinityCore/TrinityCore>`_: Open-source
+ MMORPG framework
+
+* `Windows Terminal <https://github.com/microsoft/terminal>`_: The new Windows
+ Terminal
+
+`More... <https://github.com/search?q=fmtlib&type=Code>`_
+
+If you are aware of other projects using this library, please let me know
+by `email <mailto:victor.zverovich@gmail.com>`_ or by submitting an
+`issue <https://github.com/fmtlib/fmt/issues>`_.
+
+Motivation
+----------
+
+So why yet another formatting library?
+
+There are plenty of methods for doing this task, from standard ones like
+the printf family of function and iostreams to Boost Format and FastFormat
+libraries. The reason for creating a new library is that every existing
+solution that I found either had serious issues or didn't provide
+all the features I needed.
+
+printf
+~~~~~~
+
+The good thing about ``printf`` is that it is pretty fast and readily available
+being a part of the C standard library. The main drawback is that it
+doesn't support user-defined types. ``printf`` also has safety issues although
+they are somewhat mitigated with `__attribute__ ((format (printf, ...))
+<https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Function-Attributes.html>`_ in GCC.
+There is a POSIX extension that adds positional arguments required for
+`i18n <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_localization>`_
+to ``printf`` but it is not a part of C99 and may not be available on some
+platforms.
+
+iostreams
+~~~~~~~~~
+
+The main issue with iostreams is best illustrated with an example:
+
+.. code:: c++
+
+ std::cout << std::setprecision(2) << std::fixed << 1.23456 << "\n";
+
+which is a lot of typing compared to printf:
+
+.. code:: c++
+
+ printf("%.2f\n", 1.23456);
+
+Matthew Wilson, the author of FastFormat, called this "chevron hell". iostreams
+don't support positional arguments by design.
+
+The good part is that iostreams support user-defined types and are safe although
+error handling is awkward.
+
+Boost Format
+~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+This is a very powerful library which supports both ``printf``-like format
+strings and positional arguments. Its main drawback is performance. According to
+various benchmarks it is much slower than other methods considered here. Boost
+Format also has excessive build times and severe code bloat issues (see
+`Benchmarks`_).
+
+FastFormat
+~~~~~~~~~~
+
+This is an interesting library which is fast, safe and has positional
+arguments. However it has significant limitations, citing its author:
+
+ Three features that have no hope of being accommodated within the
+ current design are:
+
+ * Leading zeros (or any other non-space padding)
+ * Octal/hexadecimal encoding
+ * Runtime width/alignment specification
+
+It is also quite big and has a heavy dependency, STLSoft, which might be
+too restrictive for using it in some projects.
+
+Boost Spirit.Karma
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+This is not really a formatting library but I decided to include it here for
+completeness. As iostreams, it suffers from the problem of mixing verbatim text
+with arguments. The library is pretty fast, but slower on integer formatting
+than ``fmt::format_int`` on Karma's own benchmark,
+see `Fast integer to string conversion in C++
+<http://zverovich.net/2013/09/07/integer-to-string-conversion-in-cplusplus.html>`_.
+
+FAQ
+---
+
+Q: how can I capture formatting arguments and format them later?
+
+A: use ``std::tuple``:
+
+.. code:: c++
+
+ template <typename... Args>
+ auto capture(const Args&... args) {
+ return std::make_tuple(args...);
+ }
+
+ auto print_message = [](const auto&... args) {
+ fmt::print(args...);
+ };
+
+ // Capture and store arguments:
+ auto args = capture("{} {}", 42, "foo");
+ // Do formatting:
+ std::apply(print_message, args);
+
+License
+-------
+
+{fmt} is distributed under the MIT `license
+<https://github.com/fmtlib/fmt/blob/master/LICENSE.rst>`_.
+
+The `Format String Syntax
+<https://fmt.dev/latest/syntax.html>`_
+section in the documentation is based on the one from Python `string module
+documentation <https://docs.python.org/3/library/string.html#module-string>`_
+adapted for the current library. For this reason the documentation is
+distributed under the Python Software Foundation license available in
+`doc/python-license.txt
+<https://raw.github.com/fmtlib/fmt/master/doc/python-license.txt>`_.
+It only applies if you distribute the documentation of fmt.
+
+Acknowledgments
+---------------
+
+The {fmt} library is maintained by Victor Zverovich (`vitaut
+<https://github.com/vitaut>`_) and Jonathan Müller (`foonathan
+<https://github.com/foonathan>`_) with contributions from many other people.
+See `Contributors <https://github.com/fmtlib/fmt/graphs/contributors>`_ and
+`Releases <https://github.com/fmtlib/fmt/releases>`_ for some of the names.
+Let us know if your contribution is not listed or mentioned incorrectly and
+we'll make it right.
+
+The benchmark section of this readme file and the performance tests are taken
+from the excellent `tinyformat <https://github.com/c42f/tinyformat>`_ library
+written by Chris Foster. Boost Format library is acknowledged transitively
+since it had some influence on tinyformat.
+Some ideas used in the implementation are borrowed from `Loki
+<http://loki-lib.sourceforge.net/>`_ SafeFormat and `Diagnostic API
+<https://clang.llvm.org/doxygen/classclang_1_1Diagnostic.html>`_ in
+`Clang <https://clang.llvm.org/>`_.
+Format string syntax and the documentation are based on Python's `str.format
+<https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#str.format>`_.
+Thanks `Doug Turnbull <https://github.com/softwaredoug>`_ for his valuable
+comments and contribution to the design of the type-safe API and
+`Gregory Czajkowski <https://github.com/gcflymoto>`_ for implementing binary
+formatting. Thanks `Ruslan Baratov <https://github.com/ruslo>`_ for comprehensive
+`comparison of integer formatting algorithms <https://github.com/ruslo/int-dec-format-tests>`_
+and useful comments regarding performance, `Boris Kaul <https://github.com/localvoid>`_ for
+`C++ counting digits benchmark <https://github.com/localvoid/cxx-benchmark-count-digits>`_.
+Thanks to `CarterLi <https://github.com/CarterLi>`_ for contributing various
+improvements to the code.