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User Commands printf(1)
NAME
printf - write formatted output
SYNOPSIS
printf format [argument...]
DESCRIPTION
The printf command writes formatted operands to the standard
output. The argument operands are formatted under control of
the format operand.
OPERANDS
The following operands are supported:
format A string describing the format to use to
write the remaining operands. The format
operand is used as the format string
described on the formats(5) manual page,
with the following exceptions:
o A SPACE character in the format string,
in any context other than a flag of a
conversion specification, is treated as
an ordinary character that is copied to
the output.
o A character in the format string is
treated as a character, not as a SPACE
character.
o In addition to the escape sequences
described on the formats(5) manual
page (\\, \a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t, \v),
\ddd, where ddd is a one-, two- or
three-digit octal number, is written as
a byte with the numeric value specified
by the octal number.
o The program does not precede or follow
output from the d or u conversion
specifications with blank characters
not specified by the format operand.
o The program does not precede output
from the o conversion specification
with zeros not specified by the format
operand.
o An additional conversion character, b,
is supported as follows. The argument
is taken to be a string that may con-
tain backslash-escape sequences. The
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 28 Mar 1995 1
User Commands printf(1)
following backslash-escape sequences
are supported:
o the escape sequences listed on the
formats(5) manual page (\\, \a,
\b, \f, \n, \r, \t, \v), which are
converted to the characters they
represent
o \0ddd, where ddd is a zero-, one-,
two- or three-digit octal number
that is converted to a byte with
the numeric value specified by the
octal number
o \c, which is written and causes
printf to ignore any remaining
characters in the string operand
containing it, any remaining
string operands and any additional
characters in the format operand.
The interpretation of a backslash followed
by any other sequence of characters is
unspecified.
Bytes from the converted string are written
until the end of the string or the number of
bytes indicated by the precision specifica-
tion is reached. If the precision is omit-
ted, it is taken to be infinite, so all
bytes up to the end of the converted string
are written. For each specification that
consumes an argument, the next argument
operand is evaluated and converted to the
appropriate type for the conversion as
specified below. The format operand is
reused as often as necessary to satisfy the
argument operands. Any extra c or s conver-
sion specifications are evaluated as if a
null string argument were supplied; other
extra conversion specifications are
evaluated as if a zero argument were sup-
plied. If the format operand contains no
conversion specifications and argument
operands are present, the results are
unspecified. If a character sequence in the
format operand begins with a % character,
but does not form a valid conversion specif-
ication, the behavior is unspecified.
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 28 Mar 1995 2
User Commands printf(1)
argument The strings to be written to standard out-
put, under the control of format. The argu-
ment operands are treated as strings if the
corresponding conversion character is b, c
or s. Otherwise, it is evaluated as a C con-
stant, as described by the ISO C standard,
with the following extensions:
o A leading plus or minus sign is
allowed.
o If the leading character is a single-
or double-quote, the value is the
numeric value in the underlying codeset
of the character following the single-
or double-quote.
If an argument operand cannot be completely
converted into an internal value appropriate
to the corresponding conversion specifica-
tion, a diagnostic message is written to
standard error and the utility does not exit
with a zero exit status, but continues pro-
cessing any remaining operands and writes
the value accumulated at the time the error
was detected to standard output.
USAGE
Notice that this printf utility, like the printf(3C) func-
tion on which it is based, makes no special provision for
dealing with multi-byte characters when using the %c conver-
sion specification or when a precision is specified in a %b
or %s conversion specification. Applications should be
extremely cautious using either of these features when there
are multi-byte characters in the character set.
Field widths and precisions cannot be specified as *.
For compatibility with previous versions of SunOS 5.x, the $
format specifier is supported for formats containing only %s
specifiers.
The %b conversion specification is not part of the ISO C
standard; it has been added here as a portable way to pro-
cess backslash escapes expanded in string operands as pro-
vided by the echo utility. See also the USAGE section of the
echo(1) manual page for ways to use printf as a replacement
for all of the traditional versions of the echo utility.
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 28 Mar 1995 3
User Commands printf(1)
If an argument cannot be parsed correctly for the
corresponding conversion specification, the printf utility
reports an error. Thus, overflow and extraneous characters
at the end of an argument being used for a numeric conver-
sion are to be reported as errors.
It is not considered an error if an argument operand is not
completely used for a c or s conversion or if a string
operand's first or second character is used to get the
numeric value of a character.
EXAMPLES
Example 1: Printing a series of prompts
To alert the user and then print and read a series of
prompts:
example% printf "\aPlease fill in the following: \nName: "
read name
printf "Phone number: "
read phone
Example 2: Printing a table of calculations
To read out a list of right and wrong answers from a file,
calculate the percentage correctly, and print them out. The
numbers are right-justified and separated by a single tab
character. The percentage is written to one decimal place of
accuracy:
example% while read right wrong ; do
percent=$(echo "scale=1;($right*100)/($right+$wrong)" | bc)
printf "%2d right\t%2d wrong\t(%s%%)\n" \
$right $wrong $percent
done < database_file
Example 3: Printing number strings
The command:
example% printf "%5d%4d\n" 1 21 321 4321 54321
produces:
1 21
3214321
54321 0
Notice that the format operand is used three times to print
all of the given strings and that a 0 was supplied by printf
to satisfy the last %4d conversion specification.
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 28 Mar 1995 4
User Commands printf(1)
Example 4: Tabulating conversion errors
The printf utility tells the user when conversion errors are
detected while producing numeric output; thus, the following
results would be expected on an implementation with 32-bit
twos-complement integers when %d is specified as the format
operand:
____________________________________________________________________
| Arguments Standard Diagnostic |
| 5a 5 printf: 5a not completely converted|
| 9999999999 2147483647 printf: 9999999999: Results too|
| large |
| -9999999999 -2147483648 printf: -9999999999: Results too|
| large |
| ABC 0 printf: ABC expected numeric value |
|___________________________________________________________________|
Notice that the value shown on standard output is what would
be expected as the return value from the function
strtol(3C). A similar correspondence exists between %u and
strtoul(3C), and %e, %f and %g and strtod(3C).
Example 5: Printing output for a specific locale
In a locale using the ISO/IEC 646:1991 standard as the
underlying codeset, the command:
example% printf "%d\n" 3 +3 -3 \'3 \"+3 "'-3"
produces:
____________________________________________________________
| 3 Numeric value of constant 3 |
| 3 Numeric value of constant 3 |
| -3 Numeric value of constant -3 |
| 51 Numeric value of the character `3' in the ISO/IEC|
| 646:1991 standard codeset |
| 43 Numeric value of the character `+' in the ISO/IEC|
| 646:1991 standard codeset |
| 45 Numeric value of the character `-' in the SO/IEC|
| 646:1991 standard codeset |
|___________________________________________________________|
Notice that in a locale with multi-byte characters, the
value of a character is intended to be the value of the
equivalent of the wchar_t representation of the character.
If an argument operand cannot be completely converted into
an internal value appropriate to the corresponding
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 28 Mar 1995 5
User Commands printf(1)
conversion specification, a diagnostic message is written to
standard error and the utility does exit with a zero exit
status, but continues processing any remaining operands and
writes the value accumulated at the time the error was
detected to standard output.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment
variables that affect the execution of printf: LANG, LC_ALL,
LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, LC_NUMERIC, and NLSPATH.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned:
0 Successful completion.
>0 An error occurred.
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attri-
butes:
____________________________________________________________
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Availability | SUNWloc |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| CSI | enabled |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Interface Stability | Standard |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
SEE ALSO
awk(1), bc(1), echo(1), printf(3C), strtod(3C), strtol(3C),
strtoul(3C), attributes(5), environ(5), formats(5), stan-
dards(5)
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 28 Mar 1995 6
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