Question

I am trying to write a code generator using a c# console application. Now when I type this, I receive an error:

    Console.WriteLine("sphere {{0}{1} {2} texture{Gold_Metal}}", 
    pre, i.ToString(), sprad.ToString());

It says “input in wrong format” I have checked that all the variables were strings, and they are. When I tried

    Console.WriteLine("sphere {0}{1} {2} textureGold_Metal", 
    pre, i.ToString(), sprad.ToString());

It worked perfectly fine. Is there a way to fix this?

Answer 1

Assuming you want a literal { inserted into the stream, you need to escape a your { with yet another brace thus:

Console.WriteLine("sphere {{{0}{1} {2} ...
                          ^^
                          ||-- see here.

Similarly for the end-brace, this is detailed in the MSDN string formatting FAQ here. The sequence {{ becomes { and }} becomes }.

From what I understand your intent to be, the full statement in your specific case would be:

Console.WriteLine("sphere {{{0}{1} {2} texture{{Gold_Metal}}}}", 
    pre, i.ToString(), sprad.ToString());

which should give you something like:

sphere {<Arg0><Arg1> <Arg2> texture{Gold_Metal}}