2013/1/29 Dean Rasheed <dean.a.rasheed@gmail.com>:
> On 28 January 2013 20:32, Dean Rasheed <dean.a.rasheed@gmail.com> wrote:
>> In general a format specifier looks like:
>>
>> %[parameter][flags][width][.precision][length]type
>>
>
> This highlights another problem with the current implementation ---
> the '-' flag and the width field need to be parsed separately. So
> '%-3s' should be parsed as a '-' flag followed by a width of 3, not as
> a width of -3, which is then interpreted as left-aligned. This might
> seem like nitpicking, but actually it is important:
>
> * In the future we might support more flags, and they can be specified
> in any order, so the '-' flag won't necessarily come immediately
> before the width.
>
> * The width field is optional, even if the '-' flag is specified. So
> '%-s' is perfectly legal and should be interpreted as '%s'. The
> current implementation treats it as a width of 0, which is wrong.
>
> * The width field might not be a number, it might be something like *
> or *3$. Note that the SUS allows a negative width to be passed in as a
> function argument using this syntax, in which case it should be
> treated as if the '-' flag were specified.
A possibility to specify width as * can be implemented in future. The
format() function was not designed to be fully compatible with SUS -
it is simplified subset with pg enhancing.
There was a talks about integration to_char() formats to format() and
we didn't block it - and it was reason why I proposed and pushed name
"format" and not "printf", because there can be little bit different
purposes than generic printf function.
Regards
Pavel
>
> Regards,
> Dean