Hello!
I was thinking about how Java beginners may benefit from string
templates. Some teaching materials rely on System.out.printf to
produce formatted output, like
System.out.printf("Hello %s!", user);
With string templates proposal, we can use
System.out.println(FMT."Hello %s\{user}!");
This is not very exciting. But I realised that PrintStream may
implement TemplateProcessor by itself (returning Void or whatever),
and print directly:
System.out."Hello %s\{user}!";
Will such use cases be encouraged, or this should be considered as
misuse of the feature?
We anticipated that some libraries may want to implement
TemplateProcessor in order to do this. However, whether we do so for
PrintStream will require thought. The former version may not be
exciting, but it is clear, and users will have no question what is going
on. The latter represents an opinionated "this is the formatter we will
use for the next century", and is a choice to be taken carefully. One
of the great things about the current release cadence (plus preview
mechanism) is that it is not necessary any more to do everything at
once; we can let things sit for a while and see how they settle.
