Wiley-World.of.Warcraft.Programming.A.Guide.and.Reference.for.Creating.WoW.Addons

Chapter 6 ■ Lua Standard Libraries 97Confused yet? More often than not, you’ll only use a very small subset ofthese options, but it’s good to understand the abilities and limitations of thestring formatting system. The examples in Table 6-2 should help clarify thebasics of string formatting.Table 6-2: Example Format StringsCOMMANDstring.format(“%%c: %c“, 83)RESULT%c: Sstring.format(“%+d“, 17.0) +17string.format(“%05d“, 17) 00017string.format(“%o“, 17) 21string.format(“%u“, 3.14) 3string.format(“%x“, 13)string.format(“%X“, 13)string.format(“%e“, 1000)string.format(“%E“, 1000)DD1.000000e+031.000000E+03string.format(“%6.3f“, 13) 13.000string.format(“%q“, [[“One“, “Two“]])string.format(“%s“, “monkey“)string.format(“%10s“, “monkey“)string.format(“%5.3s“, “monkey“)“\“One\“, \“Two\““monkeymonkeymonIN WORLD OF WARCRAFTWoW includes an extra option for string.format() that allows you tochoose a specific argument from the argument list, rather than having themin consecutive order. This option is not included in standard Lua 5.1, so youwill need to use one of the interpreters provided on the book’s website(http://wowprogramming.com/utils) to test this. If you are using theWoWLua addon, it should work correctly.To select a specific argument, include the number of the argument, followedby the dollar sign ($), immediately after the percent sign (%). For example:> print(string.format(“%2$d, %1$d, %d“, 13, 17))17, 13, 17The first type identifier is modified to request the second argument, and thesecond identifier consumes the second argument to the format string. Whenselecting parameters in this way, you can’t skip any and leave them unused.(continued)