Continuing this thread http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/core-libs-dev/2013-June/018326.html
with respect to this issue http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6178739 this Request for Review proposes the following change to the Formatter javadoc specification: diff -r 8d577b3a6ca4 src/share/classes/java/util/Formatter.java --- a/src/share/classes/java/util/Formatter.java Fri Jun 28 11:09:10 2013 -0700 +++ b/src/share/classes/java/util/Formatter.java Fri Jun 28 11:58:45 2013 -0700 @@ -190,7 +190,7 @@ * <p> The optional <i>flags</i> is a set of characters that modify the output * format. The set of valid flags depends on the conversion. * - * <p> The optional <i>width</i> is a non-negative decimal integer indicating + * <p> The optional <i>width</i> is a positive decimal integer indicating * the minimum number of characters to be written to the output. * * <p> The optional <i>precision</i> is a non-negative decimal integer usually The change is to require the field width to be positive rather than non-negative. Allowing a zero minimum field width seems meaningless. This matches the current behavior as defined by the format specifier regular expression: private static final String formatSpecifier = "%(\\d+\\$)?([-#+ 0,(\\<]*)?(\\d+)?(\\.\\d+)?([tT])?([a-zA-Z%])"; A CCC request for the above would naturally need to be approved if this is change were deemed acceptable. An alternative, as previously stated, would be to handle cases like %0.4f specially but this seems to violate the letter of the specification as currently written. It would however match the behavior of C and not require a CCC request, FWIW. Thanks, Brian
