The ability to define a mask for a string control to simplify data entry. Useful for any type of data including zip codes, phone numbers, IP and MAC addresses, formatted serial numbers etc...
I was just about to post a duplicate (almost) of this idea as I did not think of the phrase mask, but rather thought of it as "input format specifiers" (vs display format specifiers).
The inputmask/format specifier idea could potentially be expanded to also cover other data types - like array controls. You could for example make an array of fixed size by specifying an input format for a numeric control that included multiple entries - or generate a cluster by specifying variable data types in the format specification..The string case could almost achieve the same things though, just not with in-built data type magic.
Anyway - I think this might be an alternative too: If we do not get inputmasks, we could at least achieve this nicely if we had the ability to intercept incorrect input prior to display.
