The B<-w> switch is not mandatory.
Perl is at the mercy of your machine's definitions of various
-operations such as type casting, atof(), and sprintf(). The latter
-can even trigger a core dump when passed ludicrous input values.
+operations such as type casting, atof(), and floating-point
+output with sprintf().
If your stdio requires a seek or eof between reads and writes on a
particular stream, so does Perl. (This doesn't apply to sysread()
%f a floating-point number, in fixed decimal notation
%g a floating-point number, in %e or %f notation
-In addition, Perl permits the following ANSI-invented conversions:
+In addition, Perl permits the following widely-supported conversions:
- %i a synonym for %d
%X like %x, but using upper-case letters
%E like %e, but using an upper-case "E"
%G like %g, but with an upper-case "E" (if applicable)
%p a pointer (outputs the Perl value's address in hexadecimal)
- %n special: B<stores> into the next variable in the parameter
- list the number of characters printed so far
+ %n special: *stores* the number of characters output so far
+ into the next variable in the parameter list
-Finally, for backward (and we do mean "backward") compatibility,
-Perl permits these nonstandard but unaccountably popular conversions:
+Finally, for backward (and we do mean "backward") compatibility, Perl
+permits these unnecessary but widely-supported conversions:
+ %i a synonym for %d
%D a synonym for %ld
%U a synonym for %lu
%O a synonym for %lo
+ prefix positive number with a plus sign
- left-justify within the field
0 use zeros, not spaces, to right-justify
+ # prefix octal with "0", hex with "0x"
number minimum field width
.number "precision": digits after decimal point for floating-point,
max length for string, minimum length for integer
l interpret integer as C type "long" or "unsigned long"
-
-In addition, Perl permits the following ANSI-invented flags:
-
- # prefix octal with "0", hex with "0x"
h interpret integer as C type "short" or "unsigned short"
-Finally, there is one Perl-specific flag:
+There is also one Perl-specific flag:
V interpret integer as Perl's standard integer type