Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!uw-june!pattis
From: pattis@june.cs.washington.edu (Richard Pattis)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Too small field width
Message-ID: <8782@june.cs.washington.edu>
Date: 24 Jul 89 18:09:35 GMT
Organization: U of Washington, Computer Science, Seattle
Lines: 12

In Pascal, when one specifies a too small field width, my compiler prints the
"*" character replicated to fill the field width.  My Modula-2 compiler
prints the full value, in as few characters as possible, disregarding the
field width if it is too small (0 is commonly used to mean "print the value
in the fewest number of characters").

Are there any languages/compilers out there that are known, in such a case,
to keep the field width and print just some of value (for a number, either
left or right truncated)? I thought FORTRAN IV did this, but the referece I
have says no.  Maybe an earlier FORTRAN?

Rich Pattis