space allocation for sprintf()

[Peter Eichler]

In article <1991Jun5.174543.266 at dg-rtp.dg.com>, Eric R Vook writes:

>
>Harbison & Steele p.328 contains the following parenthetical comment
>after a discussion of sprintf():
>"(It is the programmer's responsibility to ensure that the destination
>  string area is large enough to contain the output generated by the
>  formatting operation.)"
>        ["C: A Reference Manual," 2nd ed, Harbison & Steele, p.328]
>
>I have just a short question, two-part question:
>    How do you know how much space to allocate?

Well, look at the stuff you like to put into your destination string.
If I'm printing 5000 floats, it should be more 100 Bytes... ;-)

>Or
>    How do you know when you didn't allocate enough?
If your machine crashes instantly, behaves strangely or your system
crashes later, you WILL know (well maybe, case the error is often hard
to find)

> [...]
>-Eric

Cheerio,
Peter

Since pleasure is the Unique, to reveal Pleasure is itself a unique duty. FGTH
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