FLIP 288: Simple String Interpolation

cadence/20240923-simple-string-interpolation.md

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+---
+status: draft 
+flip: 288
+authors: Raymond Zhang (raymond.zhang@flowfoundation.org)
+sponsor: Supun Setunga (supun.setunga@flowfoundation.org) 
+updated: 2024-09-23
+---
+
+# FLIP 288: Simple String Interpolation
+
+## Objective
+
+This FLIP proposes adding support for simple string interpolation limited to identifiers only (no support for full expressions).
+
+## Motivation
+
+Currently Cadence has no support for string interpolation. It is convenient for developers to be able to inline variables in strings as opposed to the current solution of applying `concat` repeatedly. 
+
+In general many languages support string interpolation for readability and ease-of-use. 
+
+## User Benefit
+
+Developers can avoid repeatedly using `concat` to generate strings which will simplify code and readability. Repeated concatenation is inefficient, as each concatenation results in an intermediate/temporary result, leading to an allocation and associated metering (computation and memory usage).
+
+In comparison, string interpolation can be implemented efficiently, and will thus also will lead to the user benefit of being less costly in terms of computation and memory usage.
+
+## Design Proposal
+
+The proposed syntax for the string-literal with interpolation looks like follows:
+
+```swift
+"Variable = \(someVar)"
+```
+
+The main constraint is backward compatibility, existing Cadence 1.0 code cannot be affected. This change is backwards compatible because `\(` is not currently a valid escape character. 
+
+For this initial proposal there will be several limitations on `someVar`:
+- `someVar` will only be variable references with ability to be extended to expressions in the future
+- `someVar` must support the built-in function `toString()` meaning it must be either a `String`, `Number`, `Address`, `Character`, `Bool` or `Path`.  
+
+This is still useful for the first iteration since there are easy workarounds for these limitations such as extracting expressions into local variables.
+
+### Drawbacks
+
+None.
+
+### Alternatives Considered
+
+String interpolation is preferred over a formatting function (such as `printf`) for two main reasons (1) string formatting is error prone and (2) there are many languages which moved from traditional formatting to string interpolation (e.g. Python).
+
+To talk more about (1):
+- The type of the argument passed to the formatting facility may not match the format specifier (e.g. value of type `String` is passed to format specifier for type Integer like `%d`)
+- Number of arguments passed to the formatter might not match the number of placeholders in the format specifier (e.g. too many or too few arguments)
+- When there are many placeholders in the format string, the order of arguments can get mixed up easily
+In most implementations of string formatting facilities, like when it is implemented as a normal function, these errors can not be detected statically, but only at run-time.
+
+However, some languages have formatting facilities that avoid some of the problems noted above, by statically checking the format specifier and the argument list. For example, Rust's `format!` macro does that.
+
+There are also many other implementations for string interpolation itself. For example:
+- Python has "f-strings" where an `f` prefix of a string-literal indicates interpolation with curly brace placeholders (e.g. `f"{someVar}"`)
+- JavaScript has backticks to indiciate string interpolation with curly brace placeholders (e.g. `` `{someVar}` ``)
+- Kotlin has string interpolation in normal string literals with optional curly brace placeholders with a leading `$` (e.g. `"$someVar and ${someVar2}"`)
+
+There exists no clear "standard". The proposed design leverages the fact that escaping is already supported `\` and parentheses naturally surround values in expressions. Therefore, no new syntax is introduced (e.g. no literal prefix, no placeholder indicator, no new expression surround characters).
+
+
+### Performance Implications
+
+None, non-interpolated strings should not be affected. The proposed design of string interpolation has much better performance compared to repeated string concatenation.
+
+### Dependencies
+
+None.
+
+### Engineering Impact
+
+This change should be simple to implement. 
+
+### Best Practices
+
+It may be preferred to use string interpolation over concat once implemented.
+
+### Compatibility
+
+Proposed changes are backwards compatible. 
+
+### User Impact
+
+This is a feature addition, no impact. 
+
+## Related Issues
+
+https://github.com/onflow/cadence/issues/3579
+
+## Prior Art
+Existing instances in other languages
+- https://docs.swift.org/swift-book/documentation/the-swift-programming-language/stringsandcharacters/#String-Interpolation
+- https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/inputoutput.html#formatted-string-literals
+Some rationale and useful comparisons of string interpolation versus string formatting
+- https://peps.python.org/pep-0498/
+
+## Questions and Discussion
+
+Feel free to discuss on the PR.
+
+## Implementation
+
+A POC is available at https://github.com/onflow/cadence/pull/3585.