printf(1)							   User Commands							 printf(1)

NAME

       printf - write formatted output

SYNOPSIS

   /usr/bin/printf
       printf format [argument]...

   ksh93
       printf format [string...]

DESCRIPTION

   /usr/bin/printf
       The  printf command writes formatted operands to the standard output. The argument operands are formatted under control of the format oper-
       and.

   ksh93
       printf writes each string operand to standard output using format to control the output format.

OPERANDS

   /usr/bin/printf
       The following operands are supported by /usr/bin/printf:

       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  can  con-
			      tain 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 spec-
		   ification  is  reached.  If	the  precision is omitted, 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 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 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 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  stan-
		   dard, 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 speci-
		   fication,  a diagnostic message is written to standard error and the utility does not exit with a zero exit status, but contin-
		   ues processing any remaining operands and writes the value accumulated at the time the error was detected to standard output.

   ksh93
       The format operands support the full range of ANSI C formatting specifiers as well as additional specifiers.

       The following additional specifiers are supported.

       %b    Processes each character in the string operand specially, as follows:

	     a      Alert character.

	           Backspace character.

	     c      Terminate output without appending NEWLINE. The remaining string operands are ignored.

	     E      Escape character (ASCII octal 033).

	     f      FORM FEED character.

	     
      NEWLINE character.

	     	      TAB character.

	     v      Vertical tab character.

	     \      Backslash character.

	     x     The 8-bit character whose ASCII code is the 1-, 2-, or 3-digit octal number x.

       %B    Treat the argument as a variable name and output the value without converting it to a string. This is most useful	for  variables	of
	     type -b.

       %H    Output string with characters <, &, >, ", and non-printable characters, properly escaped for use in HTML and XML documents.

       %P    Treat string as an extended regular expression and convert it to a shell pattern.

       %q    Output  string  quoted  in a manner that it can be read in by the shell to get back the same string. However, empty strings resulting
	     from missing string operands are not quoted.

       %R    Treat string as an shell pattern expression and convert it to an extended regular expression.

       %T    Treat string as a date/time string and format it. The T can be preceded by (dformat), where dformat is a date format  as  defined	by
	     the date(1) command.

       %Z    Output a byte whose value is 0.

       When  performing  conversions  of  string to satisfy a numeric format specifier, if the first character of string is "or', the value is the
       numeric value in the underlying code set of the character following the "or'. Otherwise, string is treated like a shell arithmetic  expres-
       sion and evaluated.

       If  a  string  operand  cannot  be  completely converted into a value appropriate for that format specifier, an error occurs, but remaining
       string operands continue to be processed.

       In addition to the format specifier extensions, the following extensions of ANSI-C are permitted in format specifiers:

	   o	  The escape sequences E and e expand to the escape character which is octal 033 in ASCII.

	   o	  The escape sequence cx expands to CTRL-x.

	   o	  The escape sequence C[.name.] expands to the collating element name.

	   o	  The escape sequence x{hex}expands to the character corresponding to the hexadecimal value hex.

	   o	  The format modifier flag = can be used to center a field to a specified width. When the output  is  a  terminal,  the  character
		  width is used rather than the number of bytes.

	   o	  Each	of  the integral format specifiers can have a third modifier after width and precision that specifies the base of the con-
		  version from 2 to 64. In this case, the # modifier causes base# to be prepended to the value.

	   o	  The # modifier can be used with the d specifier when no base is specified to cause the output to be written  in  units  of  1000
		  with a suffix of one of k M G T P E.

	   o	  The # modifier can be used with the i specifier to cause the output to be written in units of 1024 with a suffix of one of Ki Mi
		  Gi Ti Pi Ei.

       If there are more string operands than format specifiers, the format string is reprocessed from the beginning. If there	are  fewer  string
       operands  than  format specifiers, then string specifiers are treated as if empty strings were supplied, numeric conversions are treated as
       if 0 was supplied, and time conversions are treated as if now was supplied.

       printf is equivalent to print -f, which allows additional options to be specified.

USAGE

   /usr/bin/printf
       The 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

   /usr/bin/printf
       Example 1 Printing a Series of Prompts

       The following example alerts the user, then prints and reads 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

       The following example prints a table of calculations. It reads out a list of right and wrong answers from a file, calculates the percentage
       correctly,  and	prints 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

       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  con-
       version specification.

       Example 4 Tabulating Conversion Errors

       The following example tabulates conversion errors.

       The printf utility tells the user when conversion errors are detected while producing numeric output. These 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      |
       +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

       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

       The  following  example prints 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			   |
       +-----------------------------------------------------------+

       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 representa-
       tion 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:

   /usr/bin/printf
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE	     |	    ATTRIBUTE VALUE	   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Availability		     |SUNWloc			   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |CSI			     |Enabled			   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Interface Stability	     |Committed 		   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Standard		     |See standards(5). 	   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

   ksh93
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE	     |	    ATTRIBUTE VALUE	   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Availability		     |SUNWcsu			   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Interface Stability	     |Uncommitted		   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

SEE ALSO

       awk(1),	bc(1),	date(1),  echo(1), ksh93(1), printf(3C), strtod(3C), strtol(3C), strtoul(3C), attributes(5), environ(5), formats(5), stan-
       dards(5)

SunOS 5.11							    1 Nov 2007								 printf(1)