Can a program print without a newline?

[mortax]

After reviewing the documentation and searching the internet, I have not been able to find any examples of printing a value without a newline.

Is that possible?

[spotandjake]

#666 Here is a reference to an issue covering this and how todo it, it sounds like the eventual hope will be a sprintf library that offers things like this. That issue covers a current way of actually printing without new line though.

[mortax]

i was just rereading the documentation and have a stylistic question about the solution provided in #666. which is considered better, the original suggestion:

File.fdWrite(File.stdout, stringvalue)
void

or this alternative:

ignore(File.fdWrite(File.stdout, stringvalue))

thanks!

[av8ta]

@mortax My understanding is if you're not concerned about an error when writing then using ignore is fine. Like if you're just printing to stdout for debugging. You might want to change ignore to match for handling errors in a "proper" app.

[ospencer]

Both are fine, but similar to what @av8ta is saying here, the most idiomatic version would be having a pattern match or using Result.expect:

let printString = (s) => {
  match (File.fdWrite(File.stdout, s)) {
    Ok(_) => void,
    Err(e) => ...
  }
}

let printString = (s) => {
  ignore(Result.expect("failed to print", File.fdWrite(File.stdout, s)))
}

If you're just asking about void versus ignore, that's mostly personal preference 🙂

[mortax]

that makes good sense. thanks.

[spotandjake]

Following up on this, As of v0.6.0 we now support print("Hello", suffix="") which will omit the newline.