Yann POUPET writes: > I did not want to modify a so widely used function, and did not want > either to take the risk to break some compatibilities. If we chose, for > example, something like %M for metric, what would happen for sofware > who already use %M in their printf format string ? Right now,
That's not a legal format string, so I don't think we care what someone might be doing with it. We generally care about compatibility when the functionality in question is either explicitly documented (that is, in a man page) or, in some cases, when a "reasonable person" would have relied on it. In this case, I can see no argument that any reasonable person would rely on '%M' in printf to do anything useful, nor any indication that it's documented somewhere. It's thus an implementation artifact. Any software that's actually relying on it probably deserves to get broken every now and again. (Adding '%m' for metric, though, would probably be a mistake because of syslog.) Yann POUPET writes: > Yes indeed when I first began with this RFE, I had a look at how it was > done in other OS. And I've kept the name from one of the BSDs (can't > remember which one, NetBSD IIRC). > > I thought that if people aware of the original BSD humanize_number > function look for a similar functionnality on Solaris, the name should > help them to find it out. But I really don't care changing the name. A > poll for a new name ? If it doesn't have a compatible function signature (same argument order and compatible argument types) as well as reasonably compatible output, I would not want to see it end up with the same function name. That's just asking for trouble -- someone's autoconf script will find it and cause breakage. But that begs a question: if there's an existing known way to implement this, why would we go out of our way to be different? Is this a place where Open Solaris can provide significant value? -- James Carlson, KISS Network <james.d.carlson at sun.com> Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677
