Mask and format: operators for editing and formatting

String-processing and editing operators have been notably absent from most high-level general-purpose programming languages. With the exception of the "substring" function, all formating of character strings and numbers has been done via I/O statements. In order to use the editing capabilities of these statements internally, language designers have resorted to such awkard techniques as "core to core I/O" in Fortran, or PUT STRING in PL/I. Two operators currently used with the SYMBOL-2R computer system eliminate this difficulty and provide an excellent method of editing and formatting both numbers and character strings.