Re: check for C99-compliant snprintf - call for volunteers

[Brian Dessent]

Bruce Korb wrote:

> I know this may be seen as flame bait, but is it not just a
> bit easier to simply presume that the gnulib library is always
> going to be at least as standards compliant as the native
> implementation?  In other words, why worry?  Maybe right now
> I don't use the 'a' directive, is it worth the bother to go
> back and fix up configure scripts if the 'a' directive creeps
> into my sources?  Keep It Simple Silly to my lazy, don't-want-to-
> bother-so-much ideals says "Just always use what you know works."
> Let's revisit this in 5 or 10 years and see if one can't rely
> on native stuff by then.  :)

Er, but the entire reason for the existance of this module was so that
gdb can use %a to display floating point variables in hex, without
having to worry about whether the platform's snprintf natively supports
it or not.  Without the gnulib replacement you're back to the nightmare
of having to use a mess of ugly #ifdef junk for format strings and
argument lists, and the nightmare of maintaining cohesive documentation
in the face of "on some unspecified list of platforms, this command does
<foo>, on the rest it doesn't" which makes for quite an unpleasant
manual.

Brian