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Date: Fri, 12 Apr 1996 18:12:52 +1000
From: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
Message-Id: <199604120812.SAA04035@godzilla.zeta.org.au>
To: current@FreeBSD.ORG, erich@lodgenet.com
Subject: Re: /bin/sh's printf
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>I've stumbled across a little problem with sh's printf,
>could someone explain what's going on here:

>(ttyp0@jake)$ /bin/sh
>(ttyp0@jake)$ printf "%04d\n" 12
>  12
>(ttyp0@jake)$ /usr/bin/printf "%04d\n" 12
>0012

sh's printf is limited.  It interprets 04 as (0*10 * 10).

>It looks like they're compiled from the same sources even --??

No, sh uses its own limited formatting routine doformat().  I
think the sources are shared between csh(1) and printf(1), but
then I thought that they were shared with sh(1) before I looked
at them :-).  Perhaps everything should use vfprintf() and
fwopen().  There's little chance that everything would agree
about obscure flags or floating point otherwise.  sh doesn't
understand floating point formats at all...

Bruce