bug#17196: UTF-8 printf string formating problem

[Jan Novak]

Hello,

printf string format counts bytes instead of chars, which leads to broken 
output ...
(the same problem occurs with bash built in printf)


just try this:

$ echo $LANG
us_US.UTF-8


$ printf "|%3s|\n" "a"
|  a|

$ printf "|%3s|\n" "á"     (char is a-acute)
| á|

expected output:
|  á|

Is there some easy solution ?

TIA for the answer


Best regards
Novak