On Mon, 24 Feb 2025 at 13:48, Phi Debian <phi.deb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I also forgot to mention that C99 introduced this > > There may be no gaps > in the numbers of arguments specified using '$'; for example, if > argu‐ > ments 1 and 3 are specified, argument 2 must also be specified > some‐ > where in the format string. That rule is necessary in C because of the many ways that varargs can: different kinds of values can potentially occupy differing numbers of consecutive bytes in the space used to store as parameters. (I would say "in the call stack", except that's not how ISO-9899 defines things, even though it is how most implementations work in practice.) In the shell, we already have an argv with consistently sized elements, so randomly indexing into it does not pose any particular challenge. So I wouldn't expect that rule to be necessary, in the sense that it doesn't offer any flexibility to the implementation. -Martin PS: Hmmm, well I guess repetition could be implemented by simply shifting off as many args as there are conversions, and that would be a simple way to get consistent repetition whether conversions are numbered or not, but it feels perverse and I don't like it - though maybe I'll change my mind when I've thought it over. PPS: I wouldn't actually shift the list of course; I'd just track a striding index offset instead.
