Flaming printf (was: Re: Modula2's godawful IO.)

[Barnacle Wes]

In article <11154 at mimsy.UUCP>, chris at mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes:
% It is not difficult[*] to arrange for the linker to pull in a simple
% printf() if the rest of the program does not use floating point, and a
% full-blown floating point printf if it does.  Just because Microsoft's
% implementation is poor (in terms of space, at any rate) is no reason to
% castigate printf itself.
% 
% -----
% [*]What, never?  Well, hardly ever.  The trick is to have the linker
% examine the undefined externals for floating-point library references,
% and if present, link with `bigprintf.obj'; otherwise it should use
% `littleprintf.obj'.  It is just a Small Matter of Programming.

The Mark Williams C compiler for the Atari ST sort of supports this
idea.  The printf library function does not ordinarily include
floating point routines.  If you specify the -f flag to the compiler,
the larger version of printf (with floating i/o) will be linked
instead.  Not quite as elegant was what Chris proposed, but really
quite functional.
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