Reduce the number of format specifiers #297
Description
Issue by orenbenkiki
Friday Oct 11, 2013 at 05:43 GMT
For earlier discussion, see rust-lang/rust#9807
This issue was labelled with: A-libs, B-RFC in the Rust repository
Given the existence of {} and the Default trait, there's no real value in {:i}, {:u}, {:t}, etc. other than for providing very rudimentary type checking for the parameters passed to format!.
It would be simpler to just use {} everywhere and only use specifiers for things like changing the base of printed integers (that is, only keep specifiers such as {:x} which actually affect the way the printing is done).
If specifiers are only used for changing the base of printed integers, then their implementation can be simplified to just setting a current base member of the format which would be available to the implementation of the formatting in the Default trait, instead of using a trait per each specifier.
This way we'd end up with having to implement just one trait for printing any type, including number-like types, instead of having to implement multiple traits (one per base).