Printf

Name

printf - format and print data

Synopsis

$ printf <format> [arguments...]

Description

printf formats argument(s) according to format and prints the result to standard output.

format is similar to the C printf format string, with the following differences:

• The format specifier b (%b) is not supported.
• The format specifiers that require a writable pointer (e.g. n) are not supported.
• The format specifier q (%q) has a different behavior, where it shall print a given string as a quoted string, which is safe to use in shell inputs.
• Common escape sequences are interpreted, namely the following:

The format string is reapplied until all arguments are consumed, and a missing argument is treated as zero for numeric format specifiers, and an empty string for string format specifiers.

Examples

# print 64 as a hexadecimal number, with the starting '0x'
$ printf '%#x' 64

# prints "a0\n", ignoring everything after '\c'
$ printf '%s%d\n\caaaa' a

# prints "123400", as 'x' is an invalid number, and the missing argument for the last '%d' is treated as zero.
$ printf '%d%d%d' 1 2 3 4 x

See also

• echo(1)