# Vectorized sprintf

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/vectorized-sprintf/25248>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Created:** [June 13, 2019, 1:44pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/vectorized-sprintf/25248 "2019-06-13T13:44:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![lbilli](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/59ef9b/32.png) [@lbilli](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/lbilli)\
**Post date:** [June 13, 2019, 1:44pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/vectorized-sprintf/25248/1 "2019-06-13T13:44:10Z")

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What would be a Julia equivalent of the following R one liner?

```nohighlight
f <- function(fmt, ...) paste(sprintf(fmt, ...), collapse=", ")

f("%d %s", 1:3, LETTERS[1:3])
"1 A, 2 B, 3 C"

```

I tried looping around Julia’s `@sprintf` but, being a macro, it doesn’t seem to work in this context:

```julia
f(fmt, args...) = @sprintf(fmt, args...)
ERROR: LoadError: ArgumentError: @sprintf: first argument must be a format string

```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![laborg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/laborg/32/5474_2.png) [@laborg](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/laborg)\
**Post date:** [June 13, 2019, 1:52pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/vectorized-sprintf/25248/2 "2019-06-13T13:52:43Z")

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This should help you:

> [@Compiled sprintf?](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/compiled-sprintf/10580):
>
> does julia have a non-macro sprintf? how would one write f(x::AbstractFloat, fmt="%7.4f")= @sprintf(fmt, x) short of writing everything in macro rather than in julia? regards, /iaw