[MAN] Change characters for printf precision to bytes

On Sun, Mar 09, 2014 at 11:11:43AM +0000, Jeroen van Dijke wrote:
> 
> There seems to be a bug in the dash man page, at least in 0.5.7. It reads:
> 
>             Precision:
>                     An optional period, `.', followed by an optional digit string giving a precision which specifies the number of digits to appear after the decimal point, for e and f formats, or the maximum number of *characters* to be printed from a string (b and s for-
>                     mats); if the digit string is missing, the precision is treated as zero;
> 
> dash behaves cuts to the number of bytes
> 
> $ length=10; printf "%.${length}s\n" "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"
> eeeeeeeeee
> $ length=10; printf "%.${length}s\n" "ëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëë”
> ëëëëë
> 
> 
> The  POSIX specification (2008) says:
> 
> precision Gives the minimum number of digits to appear for the d, o, i, u, x, or X conversion specifiers (the field is padded with leading zeros), the number of digits to appear after the radix character for the e and f conversion specifiers, the maximum number of significant digits for the g conversion specifier; or the maximum number of *bytes* to be written from a string in the s conversion specifier. The precision shall take the form of a ( '.' ) followed by a decimal digit string; a null digit string is treated as zero.
> 
> So it seems to me that “characters” should be changed to “bytes”.

Indeed and this patch makes that change.

Signed-off-by: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>

1 files changed, 1 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index 7b67c0c..6f27fd7 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
 
 	* Small optimisation of command -pv change.
 	* Set command -p path to /usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin.
+	* Change "characters" for printf precision to "bytes".
 
 2014-09-26  Harald van Dijk <harald@gigawatt.nl>