The ListFormat structure

The ListFormat structure provides some utility functions for converting lists into strings (and back).

Synopsis

signature LIST_FORMAT
structure ListFormat : LIST_FORMAT

Interface

val fmt : {
	init : string,
	sep : string,
	final : string,
	fmt : 'a -> string
      } -> 'a list -> string

val listToString : ('a -> string) -> 'a list -> string

val scan : {
	init : string,
	sep : string,
	final : string,
	scan : (char, 'b) StringCvt.reader -> ('a, 'b) StringCvt.reader
      } -> (char, 'b) StringCvt.reader -> ('a list, 'b) StringCvt.reader

Description

val fmt : { …​ } -> 'a list -> string

fmt {init, sep, final, fmt} lst converts the list lst to a string, where init is an initial string, sep is the separator, final is the final string, and fmt is a function for converting the list elements to strings. For the list value [a, b, …​, c], the resulting string will be formatted as

init ^ (fmt a) ^ sep ^ (fmt b) ^ sep ^ ... ^ sep ^ (fmt c) ^ final
val listToString : ('a -> string) -> 'a list -> string

listToString fmt lst returns a string representing lst using SML's list notation. In other words, the above expression is equivalent to

fmt {init="[", sep=",", final="]", fmt=fmt} lst
val scan : { …​ } -> (char, 'b) StringCvt.reader -> ('a list, 'b) StringCvt.reader

scan {init, sep, final, scan} getc returns a reader for scanning lists of items from a character stream. The resulting reader expects the list to begin with the init string, use sep as a separator, and end with the final string. The reader uses the scan argument function to scan individual list elements.
The reader will skip extra whitespace, so to scan a list of items separated by spaces, use the empty string ("") as the separator.

See Also

The Util Library