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From: diamond@csl.sony.co.jp (Norman Diamond)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Too small field width
Message-ID: <10607@riks.csl.sony.co.jp>
Date: 26 Jul 89 05:36:38 GMT
References: <8782@june.cs.washington.edu>
Reply-To: diamond@riks. (Norman Diamond)
Organization: Sony Computer Science Laboratory Inc., Tokyo, Japan
Lines: 32

In article <8782@june.cs.washington.edu> pattis@june.cs.washington.edu (Richard Pattis) writes:

>In Pascal, when one specifies a too small field width, my compiler prints the
>"*" character replicated to fill the field width.

You don't have a Pascal compiler.  The Pascal standard (even the old
one; even J&W) calls for printing the value.

>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").

Like Pascal compilers do.  I'd suggest you return yours to the vendor
and demand a refund.  Warranty exclusions don't generally mention
blatant misrepresentation.

>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?

Fortran II did that.  Fortran IV printed stars.

I think you might be able to get truncation out of PL/I.

--
-- 
Norman Diamond, Sony Computer Science Lab (diamond%csl.sony.jp@relay.cs.net)
  The above opinions are inherited by your machine's init process (pid 1),
  after being disowned and orphaned.  However, if you see this at Waterloo or
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