printf does not have limits for the maximum value of its arguments

[jaggededgedjustice]

The GNU printf command limits the value of arguments it will accept, for example

$ printf '%.*d\n' 10 0
0000000000
$ printf '%.*d\n' 2147483648 0
bash: printf: warning: 0: Numerical result out of range

The version of printf in this repo does not apply this limit so it will produce 2 billion 0s. This is causing the gnu tests to fail when attempting to generate the final log as it has to process a log from a test that is ~2GB in size.

If this isn't considered a bug then the gnu tests should be patched to remove the problematic check.

[tdulcet]

Note that your example is using the Bash built-in printf, which produces different output then GNU printf in this case:

$ printf '%.*d\n' 2147483648 0
-bash: printf: warning: 0: Numerical result out of range

$ /usr/bin/printf '%.*d\n' 2147483648 0
/usr/bin/printf: invalid precision: ‘2147483648’

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[tertsdiepraam]

Hasn't been fixed yet

[howjmay]

Hi @tertsdiepraam if possible I want to give this a try. But what is the maximum acceptable range of a valid output?

[tertsdiepraam]

@howjmay I've tried some values and the maximum allowed value in GNU seems to be 2^31 - 1 = 2147483647. So basically whatever fits in a i32 I suppose.

[howjmay]

Thank you!

[cakebaker]

Fixed in https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/pull/6511