I wonder if this isn't an out of place recitation of a correct argument: Format strings that allow you to reorder arguments are a godsend. I can use printf in

I wonder if this isn't an out of place recitation of a correct argument: Format strings that allow you to reorder arguments are a godsend. I can use printf in c with a translation bundle, and reorder the arguments as my language needs: printf("second is %2$d and first is %1$d",first,second); Compare with cout<<args; there is much less influence you can exercise. So taking this capability away makes l10n harder. But this is an other kind of format string. In Java there is the MessageFormat API. It can do almost everything l10n requires, at the price of perl-like format string complexity.