Ok, tried it out, the odd behaviour is apparently a "feature" of the C++ compiler of VS2003. Very curious how this is processed with a Watson compiler or on a linux box. I haven't done C or C++ since the early 90's so I've no easy test environment myself. Personally I consider this a bug of kixtart, oddities of a compiler should not be imposed on the user, sort of like your tagline Jooel But on former occasions I've learned that the board has some strict view about what is a kixtart or exterior problem so I guess I'll have to live with it.

Edit: found the ancient Borland C v3.1 on my system... not to my surprise it produces the imho correct expected results, that is the trailing backslash in NOT escaped. <--- not true.. see edit2 below

Edit2: I stand corrected, forgot to doublequote the arguments, BC3 behaves the same, guess it's a printf oddity then. Also tried VB6, vbscript and a DOS batch file, they do all produce the 'correct' result.

Edited by iffy (2006-01-13 10:59 PM)