Re: Interest in a printf-gnu module for printf("%m")?

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Eric,

> wonder if there is any interest in a 
> gnulib module that provides guaranteed %m support on all platforms.

I wouldn't be interested in it, because
  - The complexity cost is high: We already have 15 *printf-posix modules.
    We would need to add 15 additional *printf-gnu modules.
    Add then we would need to add support for it to xgettext's format string
    parser, and add a way to tell xgettext to distinguish "c-format" and
    "c-gnu-format" strings...
  - It is a limited and ad-hoc extension of *printf. It is not useful for
    printing application-defined error strings, nor native Windows
    GetLastError() error strings.

> Or is better to just document in 
> doc/posix-functions/*printf*.texi that %m is not portable, and that the 
> recommended workaround is to manually pair "%s" with strerror(errno), 
> rather than relying on gnulib.

That's what I would go for, yes.

Bruno