On 21-Dec-09 17:36:12, Peter Dalgaard wrote:
> baoli...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Dear R-ers,
>> I am a gratuate student from South China University of Technology.
>> I fond the function 'sprintf' in R2.10.1 have a little bug(?):
>>
>> When you type in the example codes:
>>
>>> sprintf("%s is %f feet tall\n", "Sven", 7.1)
>>
>> and R returns:
>>
>> [1] "Sven is 7.100000 feet tall\n"
>>
>> this is very different from the 'sprintf' function in C/C++,
>> for in C/C++, the format string "\n" usually represents a new line,
>> but here, just the plain text "\n"!
>
> No, this is exactly the same as in C/C++. If you compare the result
> of sprintf to "Sven is 7.100000 feet tall\n" with strcmp() in C,
> they will compare equal.
>
> > s <- sprintf("%s is %f feet tall\n", "Sven", 7.1)
> > s
> [1] "Sven is 7.100000 feet tall\n"
> > nchar(s)
> [1] 27
> > substr(s,27,27)
> [1] "\n"
>
> The thing that is confusing you is that strings are DISPLAYED
> using the same escape-character mechanisms as used for input.
> Compare
>
> > cat(s)
> Sven is 7.100000 feet tall
> >
>
>>
>> Is it a bug, or a deliberate design?
>
> Design, not bug (and please don't file as bug when you are in doubt.)
And another confusion is that the C/C++ function sprintf() indeed
creates a string AND ASSIGNS IT TO A NAMED VARIABLE, according to
the syntax
int sprintf(char *str, const char *format, ...);
as in
char *X ;
sprintf(X,"%s is %f feet tall\n", "Sven", 7.1) ;
as a result of which the string X will have the value
"Sven is 7.100000 feet tall\n"
R's sprintf does not provide for the parameter "Char *str", here X,
and so RETURNS the string as the value of the function.
This is NOT TO BE CONFUSED with the behaviour of the C/C++ functions
printf() and fprintf(), both of which create the string and then
send it to either stdout or to a file:
int printf(const char *format, ...);
int fprintf(FILE *stream, const char *format, ...);
Therefore, if you programmed
printf("%s is %f feet tall\n", "Sven", 7.1) ;
you would see on-screen (stdout) the string
"Sven is 7.100000 feet tall"
(followed by a line-break due to the "\n"), while
mystream = fopen("myoutput.txt",a) ;
fprintf(mystream, "%s is %f feet tall\n", "Sven", 7.1) ;
would append
"Sven is 7.100000 feet tall"
(followed by a line-break) to myoutput.txt
Hoping this helps!
Ted.
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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.hard...@manchester.ac.uk>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
Date: 21-Dec-09 Time: 18:14:57
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