Printf (Unix)

printf

Developer(s)	Various open-source and commercial developers
Operating system	Unix and Unix-like
Platform	Cross-platform
Type	Command
License	coreutils: GPLv3+ [1]

printf is a shell command that formats and outputs text like the same-named C function. It is available in a variety of Unix and Unix-like systems. Some shells implement the command as builtin and some provide it as a utility program ^[2]

The command has similar syntax and semantics as the library function. The command outputs text to standard output ^[3] as specified by a format string and a list of values. Characters of the format string are copied to the output verbatim except when a format specifier is found which causes a value to be output per the specifier.

The command has some aspects unlike the library function. In addition to the library function format specifiers, %b causes the command to expand backslash escape sequences (for example \n for newline), and %q outputs an item that can be used as shell input. ^[3] The value used for an unmatched specifier (too few values) is an empty string for %s or 0 for a numeric specifier. If there are more values than specifiers, then the command restarts processing the format string from its beginning,

The command is part of the X/Open Portability Guide since issue 4 of 1992. It was inherited into the first version of POSIX.1 and the Single Unix Specification. ^[4] It first appeared in 4.3BSD-Reno. ^[5]

The implementation bundled in GNU Core Utilities was written by David MacKenzie. It has an extension %q for escaping strings in POSIX-shell format. ^[3]

Examples

This prints a list of numbers:

$forNin4810;doprintf" >> %03d << \n"$N;done>>004<< >>008<< >>010<< 

This produces output for a directory's content similar to ls :

$printf"%s\n"* 

References

1. "printf(1): format/print data - Linux man page". linux.die.net.
2. "GNU Coreutils". www.gnu.org.
3. printf(1)  –  Linux User Manual – User Commands
4. printf  – Shell and Utilities Reference, The Single UNIX Specification , Version 5 from The Open Group
5. printf(1)  –  FreeBSD General Commands Manual