Why macro instead of a function?

[cesarmarinhorj]

why @sprintf instead of sprintf?

[Vasily_Pisarev]

Now, it can count as a historical accident, like @evalpoly.

From 1.6, there is Printf.Format for format string and Printf.format for producing strings or writing directly to the output.

[ImreSamu]

• “compile-time” vs. “run-time”
• And you can use it in the “code generation” part.
  • like a code generation from a “template” but this is smarter
• Metaprogramming - Wikipedia
  • Metaprogramming · The Julia Language

[stevengj]

@cesarmarinhorj

why @sprintf instead of sprintf?

Because then the parsing of the format string can be performed at compile time (with the resulting types known to the compiler), not runtime.

(You can also use Printf.format(Printf.format"...", args...) to do compile-time parsing of the format string "...", but that’s a lot more cumbersome to write than @sprintf("...", args...).)