How do I format decimals as string for writing to file?

How do I format decimals as strings for writing to file?

In other languages like C, Java and Python, there is some kind of string formatting feature that allows the developer to format numerical and other values as strings - for example in Python ...

>> a=193.4
>> print "%8.3f" % a
>> 193.400

Does this feature exist in REBOL?

I am unable to find any documentation that describes it and it seems like such a basic, core feature of a programming language that I feel sure I must be missing it somewhere. Is there perhaps an easy way to do this in some other REBOL idiom that makes this feature unnecessary?

Thanks

Gordon

It depends to what you want.
I think you want to use save and load functions:
Example:

Code:

a: ["I" "me" "irene" $34  10  5.4]
save %output.txt a

The file output.text will be:

Code:

"I" "me" "irene" $34.00 10 5.4

If you use load:

Code:

b: load %output.txt
== ["I" "me" "irene" $34  10  5.4]

If you use save and load functions, you'll never loss the type of the value:

Code:

foreach item b [ print type? item]
==
string
string
string
money
integer
decimal

Rebol make you free to specify the type of variable, it auto-recognize all! (fighting software complexity!)
However you can transform the type of variable with the following functions:

to-hex
to-local-file
to-rebol-file
to-word
to-function
to-closure
to-path
to-lit-word
to-get-word
to-string
to-file
to-relative-file
to-char
to-error
to-datatype
to-library
to-port
to-set-word
to-refinement
to-none
to-logic
to-integer
to-decimal
to-money
to-time
to-date
to-pair
to-tuple
to-bitset
to-issue
to-binary
to-email
to-url
to-tag
to-image
to-block
to-paren
to-set-path
to-lit-path
to-hash
to-list
to-map
to-get-path
to-typeset
to-itime
to-idate


I think that you should see this rebol IDE with all functions buttons grouped by type:
http://www.rebol.org/view-script.r?script=rebolide.r

On the other hand, you could see the mold function, it converts a value to a REBOL-readable string. This way they becomes string type:

Code:

>> mold [12 $4 "me"]
== {[12 $4.00 "me"]}
>> mold 12-12-2005
== "12-Dec-2005"
>> mold $4
== "$4.00"
>> type? mold $4
== string!

If your question is: "How do I format decimals as strings for writing to file? "
You don't need this on Rebol, you can write any type to a file. Just use write function.
You can write also block and series!

Code:

write %temp.txt ["Hello Mr." 3]
== "Hello Mr.3"