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From: ark@alice.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: printf and variable length string format (asterisk)
Message-ID: <7478@alice.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 23-Nov-87 21:27:18 EST
Article-I.D.: alice.7478
Posted: Mon Nov 23 21:27:18 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Nov-87 06:52:50 EST
References: <692@zycad.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Liberty Corner NJ
Lines: 20

In article <692@zycad.UUCP>, kjb@zycad.UUCP writes:
> 
> I want to print out a string whose length I will not know ahead, and which
> is not null terminated.  I thought the following use of the asterisk
> precision delimiter would work:
> 	
> char *a = "hello"; int i;
> for (i=0; i<6; i++) printf("%*s\n", i, a);
 
Almost.  You want to say

  for (i=0; i<6; i++) printf("%*.s\n", i, a);

When printing a string (or anything else), the number immediately
after the % means the "field width" and represents the MINIMUM
amount of space the field should occupy in the output.

The number after the . means different things for different format
types; for strings it represents the MAXIMUM number of characters
transferred to the output.