the code as written has existed since it was first committed in Mar 2000: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/commit/?h=29d3ba4a7b42ed1b40b963b6047f2412ea4843b1 although the Author says Jim, the ChangeLog file says Bruno Haible.
that predates the merge of file/text/shell utils into coreutils (2003), and printf was part of the shellutils project. unfortunately the history is pretty spotty that far back ... here's its mailing list archive: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-sh-utils/ so i guess really you'd have to ask Bruno and/or Jim. my guess is that it comes from the C standard: http://c0x.coding-guidelines.com/6.4.3.html and you might find this interesting: http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2007/n2170.html http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2014/n3881.pdf -mike
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