Arch Linux

Marcus27

Member

From: Hamburgo

Registered: 2012-07-05

Posts: 11

Problem with printf

I found a line in Greg's Wiki I cannot find an explanation for:

>printf '%d' "'A" # double quotes + 1 single quote
65

>printf '%d' "'A'" # double quotes + 2 single quotes
65

>printf '%d' 'A' # just single quotes
bash: printf: A: invalid number
0

>printf '%d' '"A"'
65

>printf '%d' '"A' # single quotes + 1 double quote
65

Can somebody perhaps tell me where this behaviour is explained?

Marcus27

Member

From: Hamburgo

Registered: 2012-07-05

Posts: 11

Re: Problem with printf

Ok, accidently found out that this is printf specific. (Strangly neither in man pages nor in "info coreutils 'printf invocation'" mentioned.)

http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/00 … rintf.html

progandy

Member

Registered: 2012-05-17

Posts: 5,279

Re: Problem with printf

It is mentioned in the textinfo page.

If the leading character of a numeric argument is `"' or `'' then
     its value is the numeric value of the immediately following
     character.

---

| alias CUTF='LANG=en_XX.UTF-8@POSIX ' |

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: Problem with printf

If you've got your answers, please remember to mark the thread as solved.
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=130309