>Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 23:47:19 -0500 >From: Glenn Fowler <gsf at research.att.com> > >Don >can you clarify >for decimal_point and thousands_sep does the standard specify >(1) a \0 terminated string? >(2) if the value is "\0" then there is no corresponding separator? >(3) if the value is "<byte1><byte2>\0" then the separator is <byte1>? >thanks
Glenn, This is not an official interpretation of the C99 standard... ;-} But, the way I read C99, char *decimal_point and char *thousands_sep each point to a single byte character; not to a string having one single-byte character followed by a null byte. I believe that the wording in the POSIX standard is intended to allow the desired processing of these two pointers IF a technical corrigenda modifies C99 to make them pointers to strings. It may well be that some implementations provide null terminated strings now, but the C99 standard doesn't require that and the POSIX standard doesn't require that; so an application that assumes those pointers point to null terminated strings is not portable. - Don
