Re: bash handles bytes instead of chars

[Chet Ramey]

®om wrote:
> Configuration Information [Automatically generated, do not change]:
> Machine: i486
> OS: linux-gnu
> Compiler: gcc
> Compilation CFLAGS:  -DPROGRAM='bash' -DCONF_HOSTTYPE='i486'
> -DCONF_OSTYPE='lin$
> uname output: Linux rom-laptop 2.6.24-21-generic #1 SMP Mon Aug 25
> 17:32:09 UTC$
> Machine Type: i486-pc-linux-gnu
> 
> Bash Version: 3.2
> Patch Level: 39
> Release Status: release

The Posix standard is pretty explicit that printf(1), because of the
underlying formatted output functions it uses, is byte-oriented.  There
is support for wide characters, but not for multibyte ones.  For instance,
strings printed with %s are bytes, precisions determine the number of
bytes printed, and return values are numbers of bytes.

I will take a look at the standard and see what it says about bytes in
the format string.

Chet

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer

Chet Ramey, ITS, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/