The only hack I could think of is having the compiler front end generate calls t...

Someone · 2025-04-27T20:33:43 1745786023

> The only hack I could think of is having the compiler front end generate calls to different functions based on the content of the format string

Compilers do that, at least for the simple case of constant strings; gcc can compile a printf call as puts. See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60080021/compiler-change...

bobmcnamara · 2025-04-28T11:21:33 1745839293

That's the only one I've ever seen, and it's really just checking for the absence of '%'.

What if it could convert:

printf("parsed: %s to %i\n", x, y);

To:

puts("parsed: "); puts(x); puts(" to "); _puti(y); putc('\n');

Well. Then we'd have a lot more function calls overhead. Maybe something like:

_printf_nofloat("parsed: %s to %i\n", x, y);

Someone · 2025-04-28T14:07:13 1745849233

It’s not the only one it uses.

It also removes calls to printf("") and changes single character printf calls to putchar calls