Bug 624 wants quoted char support for printf, so you can do something like:
authorRob Landley <rob@landley.net>
Fri, 6 Jan 2006 20:28:05 +0000 (20:28 -0000)
committerRob Landley <rob@landley.net>
Fri, 6 Jan 2006 20:28:05 +0000 (20:28 -0000)
commit251161f75c0895a1138f87bd80d9bcc38e567444
tree2b121941a13619a7851da8d9f8e1663ad798ae4d
parentf8ec1b51f39b15d2d020934b2f3eb8d70e9da3e8
Bug 624 wants quoted char support for printf, so you can do something like:
  printf '%d\n' '"x"'
and have it print out 120.  This is the smallest implementation I can think
of at the moment.
coreutils/printf.c