printf(1)							   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 oper-
       and.

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, , f, 
, 
, 	,  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 oper-
			    and.

			 o  An additional conversion character, b, is supported as follows. The argument is taken to be a string that may  contain
			    backslash-escape sequences. The following backslash-escape sequences are supported:

			      o  the  escape sequences listed on the  formats(5) manual page (\, a, , f, 
, 
, 	, v), which are converted
				 to the characters they represent

			      o  ddd, 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
		       specification  is  reached. If the precision is omitted, it is taken to be infinite, so all bytes up to the end of the con-
		       verted 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 conversion specifications are evaluated as if  a  null  string  argument
		       were supplied; other extra conversion specifications are evaluated as if a zero argument were supplied. If the format oper-
		       and 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 specification, the behavior
		       is unspecified.

       argument        The strings to be written to standard output, under the control of format. The argument operands are treated as strings	if
		       the  corresponding conversion character is b, c or s. Otherwise, it is evaluated as a C constant, 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
		       specification, a diagnostic message is written to standard error and the utility does not 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.

USAGE

       Notice that this printf utility, like the printf(3C) function on which it is based, makes no special provision for dealing with	multi-byte
       characters when using the %c conversion 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  process	backslash  escapes
       expanded  in  string operands as provided 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.

       If an argument cannot be parsed correctly for the corresponding conversion specification, the printf utility reports an error. Thus,  over-
       flow and extraneous characters at the end of an argument being used for a numeric conversion 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 sec-
       ond 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: 
Name: "
       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	%2d wrong	(%s%%)
" 
	       $right $wrong $percent
       done < database_file

       Example 3: Printing number strings

       The command:

       example% printf "%5d%4d
" 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.

       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 corre-
       spondence 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
" 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 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_MES-
       SAGES, 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 attributes:

       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      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), standards(5)

SunOS 5.10							    28 Mar 1995 							 printf(1)