Introduction

For ones who don't know what it is:

Swift

let multiplier = 3
let message = "\(multiplier) times 2.5 is \(Double(multiplier) * 2.5)"
// message is "3 times 2.5 is 7.5"

Kotlin

var age = 21

println("My Age Is: $age")

C#

string name = "Mark";
var date = DateTime.Now;

Console.WriteLine($"Hello, {name}! Today is {date.DayOfWeek}, it's {date:HH:mm} now.");

Reasoning of string interpolation vs old school formatting

I used to think it was a gimmick but it is not in fact. It is actually a way to provide type safety for string formatting. I mean compiler can expand interpolated strings into expressions and perform all kind of type checking needed.

Examples

variable := "var"
res := "123\{variable}321" // res := "123" + variable + "321"

return errors.New("opening config file: \\{err}") // return errors.New("opening config file: " + err.Error())

var status fmt.Stringer
…
msg := "exit status: \{status}" // msg := "exit status: " + status.String()

v := 123
res := "value = \{v}" // res := "value = " + someIntToStringConversionFunc(v)

Syntax proposed

• Using $ or {} would be more convenient in my opinion, but we can't use them for compatibility reasons
• Using Swift \(…) notation would be compatible but these \() are a bit too stealthy

I guess {…} and \(…) can be combined into \{…}

So, the interpolation of variable variable into some string may look like

"<prefix>\{variable}<suffix>"

Formatting also has formatting options. It may look like

"<prefix>\{variable[:<options>]}<suffix>"

Examples of options

v := 123.45
fmt.Println("value=\{v:04.3}") // value=0123.450

v := "value"
fmt.Println("value='\{v:a50}'") // value='<45 spaces>value'

etc

Conversions

There should be conversions and formatting support for built in types and for types implementing error and fmt.Stringer. Support for types implementing

type Formatter interface {
    Format(format string) string
}

can be introduced later to deal with interpolation options

Pros and cons over traditional formatting

Pros

• Type safety
• Performance (depends on the compiler)
• Custom formatting options support for user defined types

Cons

• Complication of a compiler
• Less formatting methods supported (no %v (?), %T, etc)