Is there a simple way to align on the decimal dot a column of floats? In other words, I would like an output like the one of (vertical bars '|' are there only for clarity purpose)
(format t "~{|~16,5f|~%~}" '(798573.467 434.543543 2.435 34443.5))
which is
| 798573.44000|
| 434.54355|
| 2.43500|
| 34443.50000|
but with trailing spaces instead of zeros, as follows:
| 798573.44 |
| 434.54355|
| 2.435 |
| 34443.5 |
I do not think that this can easily be done with format
's inbuilt control characters, but you could pass your own function to it:
(defun my-f (stream arg colon at &rest args)
(declare (ignore colon at))
(destructuring-bind (width digits &optional (pad #\Space)) args
(let* ((string (format nil "~v,vf" width digits arg))
(non-zero (position #\0 string :test #'char/= :from-end t))
(dot (position #\. string :test #'char= :from-end t))
(zeroes (- (length string) non-zero (if (= non-zero dot) 2 1)))
(string (nsubstitute pad #\0 string :from-end t :count zeroes)))
(write-string string stream))))
You can use it like this:
CL-USER> (format t "~{|~16,5/my-f/|~%~}" '(798573.467 434.543543 2.435 34443.5 10))
| 798573.44 |
| 434.54355|
| 2.435 |
| 34443.5 |
| 10.0 |
NIL
The padding character defaults to #\Space
, and may be given as a third argument like this: "~16,5,' /my-f/"
.
An alternative implementation using loop
:
(defun my-f (stream arg colon at &rest args)
(declare (ignore colon at))
(loop with string = (format nil "~v,vf" (car args) (cadr args) arg)
and seen-non-zero = nil
for i from (1- (length string)) downto 0
as char = (char string i)
if (char/= char #\0) do (setq seen-non-zero t)
collect (if (and (not seen-non-zero)
(char= char #\0)
(not (char= #\. (char string (1- i)))))
(or (caddr args) #\Space)
char) into chars
finally (write-string (nreverse (coerce chars 'string)) stream)))
(Disclaimer: Maybe I overlooked something easier in the documentation of format
.)