On Fri, 25 Sep 1998, Gandhi woulda smacked you wrote:

: Can anyone illustrate to this ignorant country mouse...er, wolf,
: exactly why, when we have printf() already, we need to add the ability
: to convolute the format strings in such a hideous manner?

English string:

The %s %s is number %d.
(where %s %s is "adjective noun".)

Spanish, obtained via catgets():

%d es %s %s.

Oops - not only is the %d in a different place, the %s's need to be swapped.

That's what it's for - internationalization of strings with positional
parameters.  I'm using just this feature of XPG4 to do translation features
of a product at work.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling (Personal tv@pobox.com; Bus. todd_vierling@xn.xerox.com)