The following reply was made to PR bin/21970; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: David Laight <david@l8s.co.uk>
To: 
Cc: gnats-bugs@NetBSD.org
Subject: Re: bin/21970 (printf(1) breaks when format begins with "-")
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 21:45:58 +0000

 On Mon, Nov 27, 2006 at 09:21:24AM +0400, Alan Barrett wrote:
 > 
 > I still think it's a bug that printf(1) uses getopt.  I think it's wrong for
 > any utility that doesn't take options in the usual way to use getopt().
 
 From:
 http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/xrat/xbd_chap12.html
 
 Applications calling any utility with a first operand starting with '-'
 should usually specify --, as indicated by Guideline 10, to mark the end of
 the options.  This is true even if the SYNOPSIS in the Shell and Utilities
 volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 does not specify any options; implementations
 may provide options as extensions to the Shell and Utilities volume of IEEE
 Std 1003.1-2001.  The standard utilities that do not support Guideline 10
 indicate that fact in the OPTIONS section of the utility description.
 
 	David
 
 -- 
 David Laight: david@l8s.co.uk