Re: [musl] [PATCH] vfprintf: support C2x %b and %B conversion specifiers

[Rich Felker <dalias@libc.org>]

On Mon, Sep 19, 2022 at 07:59:52PM +0200, Szabolcs Nagy wrote:
> * Rich Felker <dalias@libc.org> [2022-09-19 11:09:17 -0400]:
> > On Mon, Sep 12, 2022 at 04:42:51PM +0200, Jₑₙₛ Gustedt wrote:
> > > There is one big addition, though, for the decimal floating point
> > > types, but support here is optional. I don't know if there is already
> > > an open stand-alone implementation of that stuff, but I think that
> > > that should be the goal, instead of repeating the effort for every C
> > > library implementation that is out there.
> > 
> > What do these entail? It looks like there's a requirement for printf
> > to support them, so I don't see how you'd do that as a separate
> > library. It looks like __STDC_IEC_60559_DFP__ is optional though, so
> > maybe we could just decline to define it and leave the support
> > sporadic at the level the compiler supports, as an extension rather
> > than part of the standard-specified functionality?
> 
> it seems there is
> https://github.com/libdfp/libdfp/tree/master/printf-hooks
> using glibc specific apis (register_printf_specifier)
> 
> i'm not sure how musl can handle this internally since
> we dont know in advance if the user links against libdfp.

Yeah, I don't see that as being a usable approach. It's closely tied
to the glibc printf model that's not usable in bounded memory with
arbitrary width and precision, and not compatible with linking
semantics as you mention. The amount of code needed for decimal float
printing in decimal is miniscule anyway and something we can easily do
with no actual decimal floating point code. I thought the hard case
was hex, but looking at the spec again, %a doesn't actually do hex for
decimal floats, so it should be easy too.

Rich