Printf-Tac-Toe

JKCalhoun 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Contestant: "I'll take My Dirty Programming Secrets for 100, Alex."

Alex: "Its primary purpose is to serve as The One True Debugger."

(It has certainly served me well.)

▲

idorozin 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is both impressive and slightly terrifying. Format strings are way more powerful than most people realize.

▲

binaryturtle 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's the content why I check HN! :)

▲

LoganDark 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

To be fair, this is actually `scanf` and `printf` in a loop. The `scanf` is buried in the `arg` define.

▲

danbruc 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How did we end up with printf - within a loop - being Turing-complete? Was it designed that way from the beginning? Were new features added over time until we got there?

▲

marmakoide 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Having something Turing-complete is surprisingly easy, and it hides everywhere. The repository have a small document that explains how you can use printf() as a computer : it can performs additions, logical union and negation, which is enough.

It was unintentional, but Ken Thompson being Ken Thompson, can't be 100% sure.

▲

danbruc 6 hours ago | parent [-]

So there was no extension of the functionality over time, all the formats have been supported from day one?

▲

st_goliath 6 hours ago | parent [-]

The key features that is used here is the '%n' format specifier, that fetches a pointer as the next argument, and writes a character count back.

There is actually an interesting question here: was '%n' always in printf, or was it added at one point?

I took a cursory look at some old Unix source archives at TUHS: https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl

As far as I can tell from the PDP-11 assembly, Version 7 research Unix (relevant file: /usr/src/libc/stdio/doprnt.s) does not appear to implement it.

The 4.1BSD version of that file even explicitly throws an error, treating it as an invalid format specifier.

The implementation in a System III archive looks suspiciously similar to the BSD one, also throwing an error.

Only in a System V R4 archive (relevant file: svr4/ucblib/libc/port/stdio/doprnt.c) I found an implementation of "%n" that works as expected.

I guess it was added at some point to System V and through that eventually made it into POSIX?

	▲	sltkr an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I think it was first introduced in 4.3 BSD Tahoe (released June 15, 1988): https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=4.3BSD-Tahoe/usr/... This was an update to the earlier 4.3 BSD (1986) which still implemented printf() in VAX assembly instead, and doesn't support the %n feature. So %n may have originally been implemented in 4.3 BSD Tahoe and made its way into SVR4 subsequently.