Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!uflorida!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn ) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: sprintf(3s) query Message-ID: <9108@smoke.BRL.MIL> Date: 8 Dec 88 17:04:40 GMT References: <1102@entropy.ms.washington.edu> Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB)) Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD. Lines: 13 In article <1102@entropy.ms.washington.edu> charlie@mica.stat.washington.edu (Charlie Geyer) writes: >It seems that in 4.3 BSD (and before?) sprintf doesn't lint right >except on a VAX. Actually the VAX version is wrong. sprintf() is supposed to return int. This wasn't clearly specified in the "good old days", and since one implementation accidentally returned the buffer address, somebody thought that was supposed to be the definition. > (1) What is "too painful to do right" and why? Presumably somebody realized that it was wrong but thought there was too much code that relied on the BSD behavior. (E.g. "rogue" did this.)