Can I disable printing lists of small integers as strings in Erlang shell?

Question

The Erlang shell \"guesses\" whether a given list is a printable string and prints it that way for convenience. Can this \"convenience\" be disabled?

Answer 1

I don't think you can prevent it. Prepending an atom seems like a kludge - it does alter your original string.

I typically use lists:flatten(String) to force it to a string - especially the returnvalue of io_lib:format() does not always print as a string. Using lists:flatten() on it makes it one.

I use the following "C-style":

sprintf(Format) ->
     sprintf(Format, []).
sprintf(Format, Args) ->
    lists:flatten(io_lib:format(Format, Args)).