2021-09-11 00:04:20 +0200, Joerg Schilling via austin-group-l at The Open Group:
> "Stephane Chazelas via austin-group-l at The Open Group"
> <austin-group-l@opengroup.org> wrote:
>
> > For the record, see the interesting discussions on the zsh
> > mailing list from when that feature was added there almost
> > exactly 20 years ago:
> >
> > https://www.zsh.org/mla/workers/2001/msg02715.html
>
> >From the information I have, that feature (even though limited to string
> arguments) was introduced for /usr/bin/printf around 1988 for SVR4 or SunOS
> (I am not sure about the origin). This is from before POSIX did introduce
> printf(1) and as a result, there is a difference from what POSIX requires
> for printf(1).
>
> The important fact however is that it was intended for use with gettext(1).
[...]
Looking at the svr4 source code from archive.org, printf(1) just
did:
strccpy(fmt, argv[1]);
printf(fmt, argv[2], argv[3], argv[4], argv[5],
argv[6], argv[7], argv[8], argv[9],
argv[10], argv[11], argv[12], argv[13],
argv[14], argv[15], argv[16], argv[17],
argv[18], argv[19], argv[20]);
So did not reuse and was a plain wrapper for printf(3) (which had %x$ already
then so printf(1) would have as well).
The re-using seems to be coming from 9th Edition Research UNIX
which the POSIX printf spec claims to take inspiration from.
--
Stephane
