ArgFormatter

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What Is This Library?

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This is a header-only library whose purpose is to serve as a very limited replacement for <format>/fmtlib. This is more for use in my own projects more than anything else - the goal was simply to try to make something faster than <format> on Windows specifically, which this achieves. This hasn't been benched against fmtlib itself though. This library is actually what I'm using over in my Serenity_Logger project for the built-in native formatting. The premise of this library is to be fully compatible with both <format> and fmtlib and thus uses the same exact formatting grammar and syntax as they do. The overall intent of ArgFormatter is to be a drop-in replacement for these two specifically on Windows (where this outshines <format> for the natively supported types in terms of performance; again, please note my performance claims are for MSVC's implementation only, fmtlib hasn't been benched against yet). While this library doesn't support UTF-16BE or UTF-32BE yet, it does support UTF-16LE, UTF-32LE, and UTF-8 text encodings thanks to the inclusion of another project I was working on, UTF-Utils. Other than UTF-Utils, this library has no other dependancy.

This library is able to format:

• strings
• c-style strings
• string views
• ints
• unsigned ints
• long ints
• long long ints
• unigned long long ints
• floats
• doubles
• long doubles
• const void*
• void*
• booleans
• chars
• std::tm
• And any custom type that you've provided a template specialization for with the CustomFormatter struct.

All of the above can be localized for a specific locale as well:

• Time arguments will be localized with the format and textual representation for a specific locale
  • Note: this is in regards to c-time formatting using std::tm data, <chrono> time-dates are not yet supported
  • Due to the nature of having Unicode support, this will inherently allow you to display the glyphs represented
    by the codepoints instead of the commmonly used character "?" assuming the font you're using supports
    that glyph.
  • The above Unicode point is where this library seems to differ from <format>, as <format> uses "?" irregardless.
• booleans will have the correct true/false textual representation
• All other arithmetic values will be localized based on decimal and thousands separator groupings or according to the format flag(s) present

How you format arguments here is exactly the same as how you format arguments with <format> and fmtlib so please reference Victor Zverovich's project fmt or the std::format's documentation for how to use formatting flags according to the formatting grammar used. I can't make an argument for usage of this library over fmtlib (given this library is the product of massive admiration for that library) without benching it first, but at the very least, if you're on windows using <format> already and want to squeeze out a lot more performance in regards to formatting, I CAN make an argument for using this library instead for the above listed formatting argument types, ESPECIALLY given how light-weight ArgFormatter is compared to <format>. (Full bench suite coming soon).

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If This Is Header Only, What Do I Need To Include?

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------------------------------- The ONLY file that needs to be included is ArgFormatter.h. -------------------------------

IMPORTANT NOTE

When you clone this repo, please make sure to run
"git clone --recursive https://github.com/USAFrenzy/ArgFormatter.git"

This is so that the dependancy project, UTF-Utils, is also cloned alongside ArgFormatter, otherwise, you'll run into some compilation issues when using this library. Both ArgFormatter and UTF-Utils use permissive licenses (MIT) so you won't run into any limiting usages using either of them.

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