From: utzoo!decvax!duke!trt
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Title: Re: %r format item in some printf implem - (nf)
Article-I.D.: duke.2546
Posted: Sat Sep 18 16:25:05 1982
Received: Wed Sep 22 10:07:26 1982
References: esquire.393

Due to the lack of a clearly portable way to provide routines like:
	warn("Cannot open %s", filename);
Steve Daniel (duke!mcnc!swd) used the following for "A news":
	char	bfr[BIGENOUGH];	/* handy global buffer */
	...
	sprintf(bfr, "Cannot open %s", filename);
	warn(bfr);
This way of handling variable numbers of arguments is portable,
fairly easy to use, and can be used to invoke *any* routine,
not just those written to handle printf-style format:
	sprintf(bfr, "%s/%s", dir, name);
	fp = fopen(bfr, "r");

If sprintf(III) returned a pointer to the result string
(which alas is not true of some versions) one could just type:
	fp = fopen(sprintf(bfr, "%s/%s", dir, name), "r");

Tom Truscott (duke!trt)