handling of string variables by sprintf

[Karl-Friedrich R. <mai...@gm...>]

Hi,

variables that are defined as string

gp> a= "1.234"

are generally equivalent to numerical variables, except for their
handling by "sprintf" (where they aren´t allowed), e.g.

gp> print sprintf(".3f",a)

gives an error, while

gp> print sprintf(".3f",a+0)

is allowed.

I´m not sure wether this qualifies as a bug an should be changed.

Any opinions?


   Karl

P.S. Occured to me with

gp> do for [a in "12 14 16.8 23"] {plot sprintf("dist_%.1f.dat",a)}