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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ukma!uunet!nuchat!steve
From: steve@nuchat.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Long integers
Message-ID: <318@nuchat.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 16-Sep-87 13:06:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: nuchat.318
Posted: Wed Sep 16 13:06:38 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Sep-87 07:46:19 EDT
References: <9266@brl-adm.ARPA>
Organization: Public Access - Houston, Tx
Lines: 31
Summary: This flamage is just plain wrong.

In article <9266@brl-adm.ARPA>, moss@BRL.ARPA (Gary S. Moss) writes:
> George,
> 	The format %ld is wrong when using the PRINTF family of functions.
> The reason for this is that integer arguments are *always* widened to LONG
> when passed in to a function, so the %d format is meant for LONGS.  This
> is also true for %f.  I am not certain, but pretty sure that I have gotten
> wrong behavior when using %ld in this context on certain hardware.

This can't be allowed to stand.  In C, scalar types smaller than an
int are promoted to _int_ when passed to a function, including printf.
Thus there is no need for special provisions for printing shorts or
chars as integers.  But long may be larger than int, which you would
know if you didn't program vax's or vax-alikes, and thus a special
indicator is required for printing longs.

> 	This is contrary to the SCANF family where you *need* the %ld because
> you are placing the result in an address whose type is not known to the
> function.

True. One would also need special indicators for short and char if one
wanted to be able to scanf '%d' into them.

A similar thing happens with floting point: floats and doubles are
passed to printf as double, so only one %f is needed.  But scanf
would have to know which was being pointed to to poke the converted
value properly.
-- 
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{soma,academ}!uhnix1		Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores
!nuchat!steve			all get respectable if they last long enough.
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