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Go read this section of the transcript[0]

[0]: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-roman-mars-mazda-....

That section of the transcript is incorrect, despite being from someone who worked on it. It's obviously a printf bug because it only happens with %n with valid modifiers: https://www.reddit.com/r/gimlet/comments/bdxht4/hey_its_ben_...

Despite the fact that he confirmed it’s not C code and despite the fact that the failure case has spaces in it which make it invalid? What am I missing here?

He's wrong, it is getting parsed in C. glibc happens to allow ' ' as a modifier to %n: https://gcc.godbolt.org/z/zaTnjzEY3

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