henry (08/13/82)
People programming in C should be aware of a possible future problem. In our current printf, there are two different ways to print a long-int value: capitalizing the format letter (e.g. %D) and putting an 'l' in front of it (e.g. "%ld"). The former is the one most used hereabouts. There is a new release of Unix from Bell Labs in which printf uses capital letters for other purposes, making %ld the only acceptable form. This new printf has enough valuable features that we may adopt it someday, although for several reasons there is no hurry. If we do, any program using (e.g.) %D to print long-int values will break. Accordingly, I *strongly* suggest that all future programs use the %ld style exclusively, and that existing programs be converted whenever convenient.