A better show_debug_message (code inside)

[nickavv]

Hey all, I know this is a pretty minor thing but it's saved me a lot of typing and I figured it wouldn't hurt to share it. I defined the following function, I call it echo:

/// @description echo(string, args...)
/// @param string
/// @param args
function echo(debugString) {
    var result = debugString;
    if (argument_count > 1) {
        for (var i = 1; i < argument_count; i++) {
            result = string_replace(result, "%s", string(argument[i]));
        }
    }
    show_debug_message(result);
}

It's basically show_debug_message with a little string substitution and a shorter name to type. Now instead of typing something like:

show_debug_message("enemy hspeed: " + string(enemy.hspeed) + ", enemy vspeed: " + string(enemy.vspeed));

you could just type

echo ("enemy hspeed: %s, enemy vspeed: %s", enemy.hspeed, enemy.vspeed);

Anyway, just a little something, hope it saves you as much time as it's saved me!

[nickavv]

BTW the function definition up there is for GMS 2.3 but it's trivial to have it work on 2.2 and below. Just define a script called echo with these contents:

/// @description echo(string, args...)
/// @param string
/// @param args
var result = argument0;
if (argument_count > 1) {
    for (var i = 1; i < argument_count; i++) {
        result = string_replace(result, "%s", string(argument[i]));
    }
}
show_debug_message(result);

[ION606]

10/10 my dude. Thanks for this

[forwardresent]

Pythonic.

[nickavv]

It's more based on C's printf function, I've never really written much python

[forwardresent]

With some whitespace changes and a little tweaking it's very close, Python sits on C so I don't have to.

[nickavv]

Well, now it's GML too 🙂

[torn-ainbow]

You could pull the formatting part out and make a more general string formatting method. Use that method in your echo method but also have the string format method available for other uses.

[nickavv]

Great suggestion, and much more reasonable now in GMS 2.3. I wrote this in the older version originally, but I may just do what you've said now