>> I'm not sure that the "." in "%.03d" is useful. ISTM that it is used for
>> floatting point formatting, but is not needed with integers.
>
> It is needed for integers, because you need to make sure 1 millisecond
> is formatted as .001 and not .1.
ISTM that the "03" does that on its own:
sh> printf "%03d\n" 0 1 2 000 001 002
--
Fabien.