Date: Fri, 08 Aug 2003 17:56:06 +0200
From: "Eli Zaretskii" <eliz AT elta DOT co DOT il>
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To: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
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In-reply-to: <200308080854.KAA17657@lws256.lu.erisoft.se> (message from Martin
	Stromberg on Fri, 8 Aug 2003 10:54:41 +0200 (MET DST))
Subject: Re: (fwd) Re: sscanf's return value
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> From: Martin Stromberg <eplmst AT epl DOT ericsson DOT se>
> Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2003 10:54:41 +0200 (MET DST)
> 
> Because the standard says 
> "    The sscanf function returns the value of the macro EOF if an 
>      input failure occurs before any conversion.  Otherwise, the
>      sscanf function returns the number of input items assigned,
>      which can be fewer than provided for, or even zero, in the event
>      of an early matching failure."

Yes, I knew that.

> If the string is "" no conversion is done, hence EOF should be
> returned. The string "abc" should also make it return EOF, if I've
> understood correctly.

That's not my reading of the standard.  ``No conversion is done''
means we should return zero.  EOF is for when there's ``an input
failure'' (like if we cannot read from a file due to failure in the
underlying DOS functions or some such).  The only case in the context
of sscanf where ``an input failure'' might happen is if the first
argument is a NULL pointer.

So I think our implementation adhers to the standard in these cases.

(IIRC, we already had a similar discussion a few years ago, but
perhaps in the context of fscanf.  It might be useful to find that
discussion in the archives.)