[gnugo-devel] gsnprintf

[Gunnar Farneback]

For trace messages we have the extremely useful function gprintf()
with relatives, which in particular can format moves (%m, %M, %1m,
%1M) and colors (%C). At the bottom of these functions is vgprintf(),
which is called in various ways to implement gprintf(), mprintf(),
TRACE(), DEBUG(), and a few more functions. All these can be found in
engine/printutils.c.

However, vgprintf() can't be used when we want to use its format
features to write into a string, e.g. for use in sgf traces (which are
stored in memory). It would be very useful to also have a function
gsnprintf(), which would work exactly like snprint() except having the
formatting power of gprintf() with relatives.

I could certainly do this myself, but it's not high enough in priority
to be done anytime soon. This could be a good project for someone who
wants to make a contribution without having to understand too much of
the GNU Go internals.

/Gunnar