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Open Feature request MC-1563

Allow ":" operator for formatting strings and booleans in print statement

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Description

This is a follow-up suggestion to a post in the discussion forum, linked below. I'll often print a log to the output window for debugging purposes, using code like this:
 
Print(ELDateToString(Date), " ", Symbol, " ", Condition1, " ", Condition2, " ", Value1:10:2, Value2:10:2);
 
I use the ":" operator with numeric values to help the columns line up and make the output more readable.
 
Unfortunately, the ":" operator doesn't work with strings or booleans. As a result, the first four columns in the above output will each have variable width, and none of the columns will line up consistently. This makes it much more difficult to scan the output log quickly and find the information I'm looking for.
 
It would be nice to be able to replace the above code with something like this:
 
Print(ELDateToString(Date):20, Symbol:10, Condition1:10, Condition2:10, Value1:10:2, Value2:10:2);
 
I.e., this would force the firsst column to have a width of 20 characters, and force the second, third, and fourth columns to have a width of 10 characters each. That way, all of the information would line up in a nice tabular format.
 
The same applies for the other keywords that allow the ":" operator, like Text() and MessageLog().
 
 It's possible to get this result by formatting the strings and booleans through custom functions (like the "_PadStr" function in my discussion post), but this results in messy code. It would be much cleaner if this could be supported natively in EasyLanguage through the ":" operator.

Steps to reproduce this issue

See above.

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    user-offline.png  Xyzzy (Xyzzy)
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