StuPeas — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 11:32:56 +0000

Cheers Abhishek

Abhishek Reddy — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 04:50:02 +0000

The dash and dot flags are independent of each other, so forget about -15 for a moment. [incode]printf("%.5s", $stringValue);[/incode] is what you're asking about.

The dot flag is used to specify precision or maximum width of a value. In this case, as the argument is a string, the .5s would truncate it to 5 characters if its length was in excess of 5:

> printf ("%.5s", "foo");
> foo

> printf ("%.5s", "foobarbaz");
> fooba

Precision or maximum width mean different things for other types of arguments, such as integers, floats, etc. Refer to the sprintf perldoc for more.