Re: What is the opposite of 'printf'?

[Bob Proulx]

Matthew Woehlke wrote:
> apparently uudecode is also out; my computer has man pages for it
> but no programs(?!). Conversely, I can't say I've run into a system
> yet that lacks printf.
> 
> So my original question remains... would anyone be interested in 
> considering 'unprintf' for inclusion in coreutils? (Note: I /am/ 
> volunteering to write and maintain it.)

If your requirement is that the command must already exist on the
system then that definitely defeats the addition of a new command.
Also uuencode/uudecode is many times more standard than some not yet
created command.

Note that shar has traditionally included the C source code to a
simple uudecode such that it would be compiled on the target system
and created on the fly if it did not exist.  The decoder can be very
small.

Bob