local optimized_string = formatted_string:gsub('^(%d*\.%d-)(0*)$', '%1')
Actually, I just realized that the primitive tostring does exactly the same transformation (probably in a much safer way), so we can use it in the much more complete code: ==== -- Thank you, Lua-users wiki :-) -- http://lua-users.org/wiki/VarargTheSecondClassCitizen Issue #7 -- The first two functions below implement a map over a "..." list local function map_rec(f, n, a, ...) if n > 0 then return f(a), map_rec(f, n-1, ...) end end local function map(f, ...) return map_rec(f, select('#', ...), ...) end -- Our "better formatting" function function string.better_format(form, ...) -- Every number-kind-of-format -> %s form = form:gsub('%%[0-9]-%.?[0-9]-f', '%%s') form = form:gsub('%%d', '%%s') form = form:gsub('%%i', '%%s') -- Then make every argument in the list into a string return(string.format(form, map(tostring, ...))) end -- Now Lua will happily strip the trailing zeroes print(string.better_format("%f %f m", 94.486000, 30.000)) print(string.better_format("%5f %.7f l", .577, 2.7828)) print(string.better_format("%5f %.7f %d l", 3.14000, 2.7828, 3)) ==== Arthur