From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!floyd!vax135!ariel!houti!lime!burdvax!oster
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Title: Re: %r format item in some printf implementations
Article-I.D.: burdvax.167
Posted: Mon Sep 20 07:56:41 1982
Received: Tue Sep 21 06:15:40 1982

Re: "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);"

The trouble with this is, that among the things %r stands for, it stands for
"recursive" -- if the argument that matches the %r itself has %r's in it, the
above will bomb.  Since implementation of printf is compiler and hardware
dependent anyway, you might as well bite the bullet and implement the whole
thing.