Re: portability note about 'printf'

[Bruno Haible]

Paul Eggert wrote:
> +Large outputs may cause trouble.  On Solaris 8 through 10, for example,
> +the command @samp{/bin/printf %010000x 123} dumps core.

This holds also for Solaris 2.5.1 to Solaris 10.

> This particular
> +bug should have little practical effect since Solaris shells' builtin
> address@hidden commands do not have the bug

I don't agree with this. The normal shell, used for commands inside Makefiles
and for shell scripts, is /bin/sh, and /bin/sh in Solaris 8 through 10
does not have 'printf' built-in. If you don't see the bug in Solaris, my
guess is that either you have a symlink /bin/sh -> /bin/bash, or you have
the coreutils 'printf' in your PATH in front of /usr/bin and /bin. The bug was
reported to me precisely because a normal user encountered it in a shell
script.

Bruno