Back when I was researching how to format strings in java, I was dismayed that there wasn't built-in sprintf() functionality. There was a non-standard class written by some folks at Sun called PrintfFormat. Still, not the same.

Yesterday I was reminded that such a thing was supposed to have been implemented in Java5, and indeed it was. The Formatter class provides just what I want, and it is all made even easier by just calling the static String.format() method. Oh, RAPTURE!