Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!umd5!uflorida!novavax!proxftl!bill
From: bill@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: "%#s"?
Summary: some escapes can't be used
Message-ID: <324@proxftl.UUCP>
Date: 15 Jun 88 17:40:38 GMT
References: <AWbStey00Uk4E0S14d@andrew.cmu.edu> <1988May28.222450.2680@utzoo.uucp> <1043@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>
Organization: Proximity Technology, Ft. Lauderdale
Lines: 10

In article <1043@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>, ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
> I think we can describe the proposed effect of %#c quite succinctly:
> it writes the shortest sequence <S> of isprint() characters such that
> both '<S>' and "<S>" would be legal C constants for which the '<S>'
> version would have the same value as its argument, preferring symbolic
> forms such as \a to octal forms such as \7.

You do not want to use short octal escape sequences because the
string "\a0" could be output as "\70" which is ambiguous.  For
similar reasons, if X3J11 leaves in the unlimited length for
"\x", those can't be used.