4.2 sprintf too painful?

[Jim Rees]

I've gotten several answers to my question about this cryptic remark in
the Vax 4.2 /usr/include/stdio.h.  Lots of people asked me about it, so
I'll just post the answer once.
        - Jim Rees

#ifdef vax
char	*sprintf();		/* too painful to do right */
#endif

From: sun!shannon (Bill Shannon)
Date: mon, 4 feb 85 03:05:24
Subject: Re: 4.2 sprintf too painful?

Bill Joy put that in at Sun.  "Too painful" means too painful to hunt down
and fix all the unsupported programs at Berkeley that depend on Berkeley's
non-standard sprintf return value.  At Sun sprintf was recently changed to
be compatible with System V.  The lesson to be learned is, don't depend on
the return value of sprintf.

					Bill Shannon
					Sun Microsystems, Inc.