From: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
To: Jeroen van Dijke <jeroen@vandijke.net>
Cc: dash@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Bug in man page
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 22:17:21 +0800 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20140926141720.GD14940@gondor.apana.org.au> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <B9BC530A-2542-409D-AA48-2B9E3B7906A1@vandijke.net>
commit 63ab7ea86d12ff87f311e9a59dffdc4f1d47ff33
Author: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
Date: Fri Sep 26 22:16:26 2014 +0800
[MAN] Change characters for printf precision to bytes
On Sun, Mar 09, 2014 at 11:11:43AM +0000, Jeroen van Dijke wrote:
>
> There seems to be a bug in the dash man page, at least in 0.5.7. It reads:
>
> Precision:
> An optional period, `.', followed by an optional digit string giving a precision which specifies the number of digits to appear after the decimal point, for e and f formats, or the maximum number of *characters* to be printed from a string (b and s for-
> mats); if the digit string is missing, the precision is treated as zero;
>
> dash behaves cuts to the number of bytes
>
> $ length=10; printf "%.${length}s\n" "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"
> eeeeeeeeee
> $ length=10; printf "%.${length}s\n" "ëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëë”
> ëëëëë
>
>
> The POSIX specification (2008) says:
>
> precision Gives the minimum number of digits to appear for the d, o, i, u, x, or X conversion specifiers (the field is padded with leading zeros), the number of digits to appear after the radix character for the e and f conversion specifiers, the maximum number of significant digits for the g conversion specifier; or the maximum number of *bytes* to be written from a string in the s conversion specifier. The precision shall take the form of a ( '.' ) followed by a decimal digit string; a null digit string is treated as zero.
>
> So it seems to me that “characters” should be changed to “bytes”.
Indeed and this patch makes that change.
Signed-off-by: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index 7b67c0c..6f27fd7 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
* Small optimisation of command -pv change.
* Set command -p path to /usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin.
+ * Change "characters" for printf precision to "bytes".
2014-09-26 Harald van Dijk <harald@gigawatt.nl>
diff --git a/src/dash.1 b/src/dash.1
index 6241a61..6ceb16a 100644
--- a/src/dash.1
+++ b/src/dash.1
@@ -1670,7 +1670,7 @@ for
.Cm e
and
.Cm f
-formats, or the maximum number of characters to be printed
+formats, or the maximum number of bytes to be printed
from a string
.Sm off
.Pf ( Cm b
@@ -1758,7 +1758,7 @@ is printed.
.It Cm s
Characters from the string
.Ar argument
-are printed until the end is reached or until the number of characters
+are printed until the end is reached or until the number of bytes
indicated by the precision specification is reached; if the
precision is omitted, all characters in the string are printed.
.It Cm \&%
Thanks,
--
Email: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
Home Page: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/
PGP Key: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/pubkey.txt
prev parent reply other threads:[~2014-09-26 14:17 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 3+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2014-03-09 11:11 Bug in man page Jeroen van Dijke
2014-03-14 12:09 ` Jilles Tjoelker
2014-09-26 14:17 ` Herbert Xu [this message]
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