format in m4

[Andrew Collier]

hello,

i have come across something unexpected using 'format' with m4. i am wanting to 
just trim off the decimal portion of a number. however, when the 'trimmed' 
number ends with zeros these get removed as well. for example:

m4_format(`%.0f', 293408.883333)
m4_format(`%.0f', 293409.883333)
m4_format(`%.0f', 293499.883333)

which produces:

293409
29341
2935

so, the first line works fine. the second and third lines do not produce what i 
expected at all. i thought that maybe i had misunderstood the implementation of 
'format', so i coded the above in c:

printf("%.0f\n", 293408.883333);
printf("%.0f\n", 293409.883333);
printf("%.0f\n", 293499.883333);

and in this case i get precisely what i wanted:

293409
293410
293500

i am using GNU m4 1.4.1.

best regards,
andrew collier.

-- 
Andrew B. Collier

Antarctic Research Fellow                                   tel: +27 31 2601157
Space Physics Research Institute                            fax: +27 31 2616550
University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 4041, South Africa