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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!munnari!otc!metro!johnr
From: johnr@metro.oz (John Andrew Rosauer)
Newsgroups: net.sources
Subject: shell printf - a sensible solution
Message-ID: <377@metro.oz>
Date: Sun, 15-Mar-87 23:12:21 EST
Article-I.D.: metro.377
Posted: Sun Mar 15 23:12:21 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 17-Mar-87 01:30:58 EST
Reply-To: johnr@metro.su.oz (John Andrew Rosauer)
Distribution: world
Organization: Uni Computing Services, Uni of Sydney. Australia.
Lines: 17

Below is a shell printf NOT written in C.
People should spend a few minutes thinking to see if something can be
done using available utilities rather than immediately writing
thousands of lines of C. It's wasting someone's money.
###########################################################
if [ $# -lt 1 ]
then
	echo >&2 "Usage: printf format [ arg ...]"
	exit 1
fi
x="\"$1\""
shift
for i
do
	x="$x,\"$i\""
done
awk "BEGIN { printf $x; exit }"