Bug in man page

[Jeroen van Dijke <jeroen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

There seems to be a bug in the dash man page, at least in 0.5.7. It reads:

            Precision:
                    An optional period, `.', followed by an optional digit string giving a precision which specifies the number of digits to appear after the decimal point, for e and f formats, or the maximum number of *characters* to be printed from a string (b and s for-
                    mats); if the digit string is missing, the precision is treated as zero;

dash behaves cuts to the number of bytes

$ length=10; printf "%.${length}s\n" "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"
eeeeeeeeee
$ length=10; printf "%.${length}s\n" "ëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëëë”
ëëëëë


The  POSIX specification (2008) says:

precision Gives the minimum number of digits to appear for the d, o, i, u, x, or X conversion specifiers (the field is padded with leading zeros), the number of digits to appear after the radix character for the e and f conversion specifiers, the maximum number of significant digits for the g conversion specifier; or the maximum number of *bytes* to be written from a string in the s conversion specifier. The precision shall take the form of a ( '.' ) followed by a decimal digit string; a null digit string is treated as zero.

So it seems to me that “characters” should be changed to “bytes”.

Kind Regards,

Jeroen van Dijke--
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