🚀 go-pugleaf

geisler@mcs.anl.gov (Jonathan Geisler) writes:

>FFarance (ffarance@aol.com) wrote:

>: 	printf("%?d",precof(x),x);

>: 	printf("%*?d",field_width,precof(x),x);

>: The "precof()" operator returns a "prec_t" which extracts the precision
>: information (and other SBEIR information) from the operand.  The "scanf"
>: function is extended similarly.

>It seems like a little overkill to have to always include a ?/precof()
>combination for any precision number.  Why not define a new modifier
>that will automatically do the same lookup as precof() without the need
>for the programmer to explicitly state it?  So, for example, the 2 above
>examples become (assuming the new modifier is 'P'):

>    printf("%P", x);                   AND
>    printf("%*P", field_width, x);

>This looks much more reasonable and readable to me.

It looks a lot harder to implement to me. One of the nice things about C was
that you could implement the C library independently from the C compiler.

The C compiler didn't have to know about printf and printf could be written
entirely in portable C. This is not possible with your proposal (unless you
promote everything to (int atleast:128), which I wouldn't want the compiler
to do.

	hp