[illumos-Developer] webrev: printf

[Garrett D'Amore]

On Thu, 2010-10-14 at 18:07 +0200, Nicholas George wrote:
> On 14 October 2010 17:41, Garrett D'Amore <garrett at nexenta.com> wrote:
> > So I did find one statement, which caused to add a few lines of code:
> >
> > Standard utilities that do not accept options,
> >         * but that do accept operands, shall recognize "--" as a
> >         * first argument to be discarded.
> >
> >
> > So I added this to the program:
> >
> >        /*
> >         * POSIX says: Standard utilities that do not accept options,
> >         * but that do accept operands, shall recognize "--" as a
> >         * first argument to be discarded.
> >         */
> >        if (strcmp(argv[0], "--") == 0) {
> >                argc--;
> >                argv++;
> >        }
> >
> > (Argv[0] here is after we've skipped past argv[0] for the program name
> > itself.)
> >
> > Apart from that particular test, I can't imagine what kind of tests
> > you'd have for - arguments.
> >
> > My testing shows that legacy printf also behaves the same way... it will
> > discard -- but not -<letter>.
> 
> Yes, but this is a BUG and not allowed for a POSIX conforming utility.
> You're merely repeating the argumentation we had in the bash list
> [http://www.mail-archive.com/bug-bash@gnu.org/msg03483.html] which was
> the prelude to the Austin discussion and interpretation request. But
> it does not make Solaris10 /bin/printf nor your printf conform to the
> standard.
> You have to choose - standard conformance or a buggy legacy
> implementation which breaks conforming scripts.

Explain to me how this behavior breaks conforming scripts?  If a script
doesn't rely on the "broken behavior", it should be fine, right?  A
conforming script that wants to output "-a" will do printf -- -a    this
will work with both ksh93 and my implementation.  And legacy closed
printf.

	- Garrett
> 
> Nicholas