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From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: printf
Message-ID: <11370@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 21 Oct 89 22:36:43 GMT
References: <543@uwm.edu>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 12

In article <543@uwm.edu> zhao@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (T.C. Zhao) writes:
>I recently came across a piece of c code:(both a and b are integers)
>printf("%d"+(a),b);
>in passes compiler without any problem, what does this code mean ?

It means what it says, namely the format string passed to printf()
depends on the value of the variable a; a must be 0, 1, or 2
(corresponding to equivalent format strings "%d", "d", and ""), and
in the latter two cases printf() will ignore the second argument (b).

I can see using such a trick in some other cases, but this doesn't
seem to be a wise use of it.