Next: SAY /NOADVANCE Up: SAY Previous: SAY Contents Index
[SIC\]SAY Arg1 Arg2 [... ArgN] /FORMAT fmt1 fmt2 [...fmtn]
where fmt1 applies to Arg1, and so on. The format used is a Fortran for-
mat (so it may be slightly machine-dependent). Use formats like a10, i2,
f5.2, and so on. For example:
SIC> say '2*pi' /format F4.2
6.28
Be careful that each argument must be separated by blanks (see "Multiple
arguments" vs "Concatenated arguments" in the main HELP SAY).
Formatting a scalar variable:
Note also that the /FORMAT context, SAY is able to format a variable
without a pre-evaluation by Sic. For example:
SIC> say pi
pi
SIC> say 'pi'
3.1415926535898
SIC> say pi /format F4.2
3.14
SIC> say 'pi' /format F4.2
3.14
1) In the first case, SAY considers unquoted arguments as simple
strings to be displayed "as is".
2) In the second case, using single-quotes, Sic translates the vari-
able contents to a text representation which is then given to SAY
(SAY is not aware that a floating point variable is involved
here).
3) In the third case, a floating point format is requested: this is
an indication to SAY that the argument must be a numeric variable
which has to be converted in a specific way. Here SAY knows it is
dealing with a variable.
4) And finally, the last form should be avoided! The single-quotes
are a request to Sic to translate the variable to a string using
its best format (same as second case). Then this string is passed
to SAY. As the /FORMAT option is present, SAY re-interprets the
ASCII string into a floating-point value, and then this value is
finally formatted to its final representation. In other words,
the following sequence occured: read variable name -> get its
floating-point value -> format as ASCII string -> read as float-
ing-point value -> format as ASCII string. There are two useless
steps, even if the result is correct as Sic avoids precision loss
when representing numeric values.
Formatting an array variable:
If the argument is an array variable, the associated format is ap-
plied repeatedly to all its individual values:
SIC> define real a[4]
SIC> let a 1.2 3.4 5.6 7.8
SIC> say a /format f6.2
1.20 3.40 5.60 7.80
SIC> say a /format 4(f6.2) ! Equivalent
1.20 3.40 5.60 7.80
Note however that the format can be used to display array values
grouped per line, e.g.
SIC> say a /format 2(f6.2) ! Group 2 values per line
1.20 3.40
5.60 7.80
Mixture of explicit values, evaluated expressions, scalar, and array
variables:
SIC> define integer n
SIC> let n 4
SIC> define integer id[n]
SIC> let id[i] i
SIC> say "My interferometer has " n " antennas numbered" -
SIC-? id " providing " 'n*(n-1)/2' " baselines." -
SIC-? /format a i0 a i3 a i0 a
My interferometer has 4 antennas numbered 1 2 3 4 providing 6 ba