[threeten-dev] Pattern letters

[Stephen Colebourne]

Reserving the characters for a future JDK is a good idea. Make it so!
Stephen

On 14 December 2012 14:39, Roger Riggs <Roger.Riggs at oracle.com> wrote:
> Reserving the characters is a good idea, adding them to the set of
> characters that have to be explicitly quoted to be in the output string.
>
> If the {} construct follows the format letter then it will require a
> lookahead
> mechanism.  The syntax in java.util.Formatter puts the flags, width,
> precision,etc
> *before* the conversion letter; making that consistent would make
> it easier for developers.
>
> $.02, Roger
>
>
> On 12/14/2012 12:00 AM, Xueming Shen wrote:
>>
>> The pattern letter system is perfect when the format patterns are those
>> year/month/day/hour/minute/second date/time elements, such as "yyyy"
>> "MM dd" or "hh:mm:ss". But it starts to become somewhat strange when
>> various different date/time elements get added and various "styles" get
>> introduced, especially you have to list 9 letters for the nano world and 5
>> pattern letters but for "narrow form", sometime you will have to say "what
>> the...". Given my j.u.Formatter background, just wonder if it is
>> considerable
>> to add some new syntax to the system, for example let's reserve the { and
>> }
>> pair for various format flag, widht, precision an/or styles
>>
>> {[flags][width][.precision][narrow|short|full]]|
>>
>> narrow, short and full can be the reserved/accepted style name for text,
>> for example E{short} for EEE, E{full} for EEEE and E{narrow} for EEEEE.
>>
>> Personally I feel H{2.2} looks better than the "ppH", and it's attractive
>> to have
>> "-" as the left-justified flag:-)
>>
>> Understand it's a "culture" difference, and understand it's perfect to
>> count the
>> number of pattern letters to have a real "feeling" how the output might
>> look
>> like in most(?) of the cases, but just wonder it might be convenient/cool
>> to have
>> a mixed culture pattern system. We have reserved [ and ] anyway and it's
>> just an
>> addition.
>>
>> It's compatible with neither jdk's existing pattern, nor CLDR though:-)
>>
>> -Sherman
>
>
> --
> Thanks, Roger
>
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