[Coco] glork!!!

[Willard Goosey]

>Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:39:01 -0500
>From: Gene Heskett <gene.heskett at verizon.net>

>Its always worked for me.

For me, too, until I started carefully checking its return value. ;-)

>>Specifically, ..printf("foo bar\n") returned -79xxx and
>>... printf("%s\n","foo bar") returns 31744!
>>
>You are leaving out the output format specifier in the first case
>Willard.  Go look up printf in any C reference book.  

K&R, page 6: ...printf("hello world\n");

Not that K&R ever actually specify printf's return value...  Like many
things in K&R, it's just sort of assumed...  The man page for
printf(3) on an  AT&T K&R compiler says it returns the number of
characters printed.

>Also, the "foo bar" should point at the defined variables.  Either
>that or bit rot has gotten to your copy...

Yeah, yeah, the compiler had to generate a thunk.  That's what
compilers are for, and if it couldn't handle, the format-string
wouldn't work either. 

>printf("list-of-format-strings\r", nameofvar, nameofvar, etc);

More formally: int printf(control [, arg1,] ...) 
                   char *control;

(Again, from the AT&T man page.)

>That's off the top of my head, but that's how I remember it, having
>written a bunch of stuff in C.

Overly restrictive, but essentially correct. 

You want scary?  Read the C99 spec for the %n specifier!  That is NOT
printf's job!

Willard
-- 
Willard Goosey  goosey at sdc.org
Socorro, New Mexico, USA
"I've never been to Contempt!  Isn't that somewhere in New Mexico?"
   --- Yacko