Curious Omission In New-Style Formats

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly at gmail.com>:

> I don't know of anybody who would consider that good design, and the
> "precision" field in printf-style formatting isn't good design either.
> But it has history behind it, so does that put it in the right?

Apparently, the original intent for the field was for precision only,
and the syntax of placing the precision after a dot reinforces the
notion. Later, the field found other neat uses and people didn't think
of going back and renaming the field in source code and all of the
documentation.

For Unix hackers, this was a neat trick, a laudable hack.

A somewhat similar example is the "execute" permission flag on Unix
files. On regular files, it expresses whether the file can be executed.
On directory files, it expresses whether it can be "entered".

Just as you can enter into philosophical discussions about whether
integers or strings can have a precision, you can debate whether a
directory can be executed.


Marko