Hello,
today I noticed the following deficiencies in implementation and
documentation of printf:
(1)
Built-in help (/usr/bin/printf --help)
entirely fails to mention the option --.
This is even more surprising, as an error message explicitly points
to the built-in help when that option is used without any additional
parameters:
$/usr/bin/printf --
printf: missing operand
Try '/usr/bin/printf --help' for more information.
(2)
man page (commonly: /usr/share/man/man1/printf.1.gz)
is missing any mention (lest description) of the option --.
(3)
Online-Documentation
(https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/printf-invocation.html#printf-invocation)
is missing any mention (lest description) of the option --.
Though at the end of that documentation page, it says:
"The only options are a lone --help or --version. See Common
options
<https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/Common-options.html>.
Options must precede operands."
Now seeing that only three "Common options" do exist, it does not
seem to make sense that the printf page explicitly mentions only two of
them ( --help , --version ) but not the third ( -- ).
Obviously, these deficiencies exist in all languages/translations.
Regards,
Bernhard
