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[issue](https://github.com/fmtlib/fmt/issues).
# Motivation
# Sponsors
So why yet another formatting library?
There are plenty of methods for doing this task, from standard ones like
the printf family of function and iostreams to Boost Format and
FastFormat libraries. The reason for creating a new library is that
every existing solution that I found either had serious issues or
didn\'t provide all the features I needed.
## printf
The good thing about `printf` is that it is pretty fast and readily
available being a part of the C standard library. The main drawback is
that it doesn\'t support user-defined types. `printf` also has safety
issues although they are somewhat mitigated with [\_\_attribute\_\_
((format (printf,
\...))](https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Common-Attributes.html) in
GCC. There is a POSIX extension that adds positional arguments required
for
[i18n](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_localization)
to `printf` but it is not a part of C99 and may not be available on some
platforms.
## iostreams
The main issue with iostreams is best illustrated with an example:
``` c++
std::cout << std::setprecision(2) << std::fixed << 1.23456 << "\n";
```
which is a lot of typing compared to printf:
``` c++
printf("%.2f\n", 1.23456);
```
Matthew Wilson, the author of FastFormat, called this \"chevron hell\".
iostreams don\'t support positional arguments by design.
The good part is that iostreams support user-defined types and are safe
although error handling is awkward.
## Boost Format
This is a very powerful library that supports both `printf`-like format
strings and positional arguments. Its main drawback is performance.
According to various benchmarks, it is much slower than other methods
considered here. Boost Format also has excessive build times and severe
code bloat issues (see [Benchmarks](#benchmarks)).
## FastFormat
This is an interesting library that is fast, safe and has positional
arguments. However, it has significant limitations, citing its author:
> Three features that have no hope of being accommodated within the
> current design are:
>
> - Leading zeros (or any other non-space padding)
> - Octal/hexadecimal encoding
> - Runtime width/alignment specification
It is also quite big and has a heavy dependency, on STLSoft, which might be
too restrictive for use in some projects.
## Boost Spirit.Karma
This is not a formatting library but I decided to include it here for
completeness. As iostreams, it suffers from the problem of mixing
verbatim text with arguments. The library is pretty fast, but slower on
integer formatting than `fmt::format_to` with format string compilation
on Karma\'s own benchmark, see [Converting a hundred million integers to
strings per
second](http://www.zverovich.net/2020/06/13/fast-int-to-string-revisited.html).
{fmt} development is supported by individual sponsors. If you find this
library useful, please consider [sponsoring its development on GitHub
Sponsors](https://github.com/sponsors/vitaut).
# License