printf(1p) — Linux manual page

PROLOG | NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | OPERANDS | STDIN | INPUT FILES | ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES | ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS | STDOUT | STDERR | OUTPUT FILES | EXTENDED DESCRIPTION | EXIT STATUS | CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS | APPLICATION USAGE | EXAMPLES | RATIONALE | FUTURE DIRECTIONS | SEE ALSO | COPYRIGHT

PRINTF(1P)              POSIX Programmer's Manual             PRINTF(1P)

PROLOG         top

       This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The
       Linux implementation of this interface may differ (consult the
       corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior),
       or the interface may not be implemented on Linux.

NAME         top

       printf — write formatted output

SYNOPSIS         top

       printf format [argument...]

DESCRIPTION         top

       The printf utility shall write formatted operands to the standard
       output. The argument operands shall be formatted under control of
       the format operand.

OPTIONS         top

       None.

OPERANDS         top

       The following operands shall be supported:

       format    A string describing the format to use to write the
                 remaining operands.  See the EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
                 section.

       argument  The strings to be written to standard output, under the
                 control of format.  See the EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
                 section.

STDIN         top

       Not used.

INPUT FILES         top

       None.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES         top

       The following environment variables shall affect the execution of
       printf:

       LANG      Provide a default value for the internationalization
                 variables that are unset or null. (See the Base
                 Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Section 8.2,
                 Internationalization Variables the precedence of
                 internationalization variables used to determine the
                 values of locale categories.)

       LC_ALL    If set to a non-empty string value, override the values
                 of all the other internationalization variables.

       LC_CTYPE  Determine the locale for the interpretation of
                 sequences of bytes of text data as characters (for
                 example, single-byte as opposed to multi-byte
                 characters in arguments).

       LC_MESSAGES
                 Determine the locale that should be used to affect the
                 format and contents of diagnostic messages written to
                 standard error.

       LC_NUMERIC
                 Determine the locale for numeric formatting. It shall
                 affect the format of numbers written using the e, E, f,
                 g, and G conversion specifier characters (if
                 supported).

       NLSPATH   Determine the location of message catalogs for the
                 processing of LC_MESSAGES.

ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS         top

       Default.

STDOUT         top

       See the EXTENDED DESCRIPTION section.

STDERR         top

       The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.

OUTPUT FILES         top

       None.

EXTENDED DESCRIPTION         top

       The format operand shall be used as the format string described
       in the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Chapter 5, File
       Format Notation with the following exceptions:

        1. A <space> in the format string, in any context other than a
           flag of a conversion specification, shall be treated as an
           ordinary character that is copied to the output.

        2. A '' character in the format string shall be treated as a ''
           character, not as a <space>.

        3. In addition to the escape sequences shown in the Base
           Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Chapter 5, File Format
           Notation ('\\', '\a', '\b', '\f', '\n', '\r', '\t', '\v'),
           "\ddd", where ddd is a one, two, or three-digit octal number,
           shall be written as a byte with the numeric value specified
           by the octal number.

        4. The implementation shall not precede or follow output from
           the d or u conversion specifiers with <blank> characters not
           specified by the format operand.

        5. The implementation shall not precede output from the o
           conversion specifier with zeros not specified by the format
           operand.

        6. The a, A, e, E, f, F, g, and G conversion specifiers need not
           be supported.

        7. An additional conversion specifier character, b, shall be
           supported as follows. The argument shall be taken to be a
           string that can contain <backslash>-escape sequences. The
           following <backslash>-escape sequences shall be supported:

           --  The escape sequences listed in the Base Definitions
               volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Chapter 5, File Format Notation
               ('\\', '\a', '\b', '\f', '\n', '\r', '\t', '\v'), which
               shall be converted to the characters they represent

           --  "\0ddd", where ddd is a zero, one, two, or three-digit
               octal number that shall be converted to a byte with the
               numeric value specified by the octal number

           --  '\c', which shall not be written and shall cause 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 shall be 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 shall be taken to be infinite, so all bytes up to
           the end of the converted string shall be written.

        8. For each conversion specification that consumes an argument,
           the next argument operand shall be evaluated and converted to
           the appropriate type for the conversion as specified below.

        9. The format operand shall be reused as often as necessary to
           satisfy the argument operands. Any extra b, c, or s
           conversion specifiers shall be evaluated as if a null string
           argument were supplied; other extra conversion specifications
           shall be 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.

       10. If a character sequence in the format operand begins with a
           '%' character, but does not form a valid conversion
           specification, the behavior is unspecified.

       11. The argument to the c conversion specifier can be a string
           containing zero or more bytes. If it contains one or more
           bytes, the first byte shall be written and any additional
           bytes shall be ignored. If the argument is an empty string,
           it is unspecified whether nothing is written or a null byte
           is written.

       The argument operands shall be treated as strings if the
       corresponding conversion specifier is b, c, or s, and shall be
       evaluated as if by the strtod() function if the corresponding
       conversion specifier is a, A, e, E, f, F, g, or G.  Otherwise,
       they shall be evaluated as unsuffixed C integer constants, as
       described by the ISO C standard, with the following extensions:

        *  A leading <plus-sign> or <hyphen-minus> shall be allowed.

        *  If the leading character is a single-quote or double-quote,
           the value shall be the numeric value in the underlying
           codeset of the character following the single-quote or
           double-quote.

        *  Suffixed integer constants may be allowed.

       If an argument operand cannot be completely converted into an
       internal value appropriate to the corresponding conversion
       specification, a diagnostic message shall be written to standard
       error and the utility shall not exit with a zero exit status, but
       shall continue processing any remaining operands and shall write
       the value accumulated at the time the error was detected to
       standard output.

       It shall not be considered an error if an argument operand is not
       completely used for a b, c, or s conversion.

EXIT STATUS         top

       The following exit values shall be returned:

        0    Successful completion.

       >0    An error occurred.

CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS         top

       Default.

       The following sections are informative.

APPLICATION USAGE         top

       The floating-point formatting conversion specifications of
       printf() are not required because all arithmetic in the shell is
       integer arithmetic. The awk utility performs floating-point
       calculations and provides its own printf function. The bc utility
       can perform arbitrary-precision floating-point arithmetic, but
       does not provide extensive formatting capabilities. (This printf
       utility cannot really be used to format bc output; it does not
       support arbitrary precision.) Implementations are encouraged to
       support the floating-point conversions as an extension.

       Note that this printf utility, like the printf() function defined
       in the System Interfaces volume of POSIX.1‐2017 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.

       No provision is made in this volume of POSIX.1‐2017 which allows
       field widths and precisions to be specified as '*' since the '*'
       can be replaced directly in the format operand using shell
       variable substitution. Implementations can also provide this
       feature as an extension if they so choose.

       Hexadecimal character constants as defined in the ISO C standard
       are not recognized in the format operand because there is no
       consistent way to detect the end of the constant. Octal character
       constants are limited to, at most, three octal digits, but
       hexadecimal character constants are only terminated by a non-hex-
       digit character. In the ISO C standard, the "##" concatenation
       operator can be used to terminate a constant and follow it with a
       hexadecimal character to be written. In the shell, concatenation
       occurs before the printf utility has a chance to parse the end of
       the hexadecimal constant.

       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 APPLICATION USAGE section of
       echo(1p) 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 is required to
       report an error. Thus, overflow and extraneous characters at the
       end of an argument being used for a numeric conversion shall be
       reported as errors.

EXAMPLES         top

       To alert the user and then print and read a series of prompts:

           printf "\aPlease fill in the following: \nName: "
           read name
           printf "Phone number: "
           read phone

       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>.  The
       percentage is written to one decimal place of accuracy:

           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

       The command:

           printf "%5d%4d\n" 1 21 321 4321 54321

       produces:

               1  21
             3214321
           54321   0

       Note 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.

       The printf utility is required to notify 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:
   ┌─────────────┬─────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────┐
   │             │  Standard   │                                           │
   │  Argument   Output    Diagnostic Output             │
   ├─────────────┼─────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────┤
   │ 5a          │ 5           │ printf: "5a" not completely converted     │
   │ 9999999999  │ 2147483647  │ printf: "9999999999" arithmetic overflow  │
   │ -9999999999 │ -2147483648 │ printf: "-9999999999" arithmetic overflow │
   │ ABC         │ 0           │ printf: "ABC" expected numeric value      │
   └─────────────┴─────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────┘

       The diagnostic message format is not specified, but these
       examples convey the type of information that should be reported.
       Note that the value shown on standard output is what would be
       expected as the return value from the strtol() function as
       defined in the System Interfaces volume of POSIX.1‐2017. A
       similar correspondence exists between %u and strtoul() and %e,
       %f, and %g (if the implementation supports floating-point
       conversions) and strtod().

       In a locale using the ISO/IEC 646:1991 standard as the underlying
       codeset, the command:

           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 ISO/IEC 646:1991
             standard codeset

       Note 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 as described in the
       System Interfaces volume of POSIX.1‐2017.

RATIONALE         top

       The printf utility was added to provide functionality that has
       historically been provided by echo.  However, due to
       irreconcilable differences in the various versions of echo
       extant, the version has few special features, leaving those to
       this new printf utility, which is based on one in the Ninth
       Edition system.

       The EXTENDED DESCRIPTION section almost exactly matches the
       printf() function in the ISO C standard, although it is described
       in terms of the file format notation in the Base Definitions
       volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Chapter 5, File Format Notation.

       Earlier versions of this standard specified that arguments for
       all conversions other than b, c, and s were evaluated in the same
       way (as C constants, but with stated exceptions). For
       implementations supporting the floating-point conversions it was
       not clear whether integer conversions need only accept integer
       constants and floating-point conversions need only accept
       floating-point constants, or whether both types of conversions
       should accept both types of constants. Also by not distinguishing
       between them, the requirement relating to a leading single-quote
       or double-quote applied to floating-point conversions even though
       this provided no useful functionality to applications that was
       not already available through the integer conversions. The
       current standard clarifies the situation by specifying that the
       arguments for floating-point conversions are evaluated as if by
       strtod(), and the arguments for integer conversions are evaluated
       as C integer constants, with the special treatment of leading
       single-quote and double-quote applying only to integer
       conversions.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS         top

       None.

SEE ALSO         top

       awk(1p), bc(1p), echo(1p)

       The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Chapter 5, File
       Format Notation, Chapter 8, Environment Variables

       The System Interfaces volume of POSIX.1‐2017, fprintf(3p),
       strtod(3p)

COPYRIGHT         top

       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic
       form from IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, Standard for Information
       Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The
       Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright
       (C) 2018 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
       Engineers, Inc and The Open Group.  In the event of any
       discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The
       Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group
       Standard is the referee document. The original Standard can be
       obtained online at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .

       Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page
       are most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of
       the source files to man page format. To report such errors, see
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .

IEEE/The Open Group               2017                        PRINTF(1P)

Pages that refer to this page: echo(1p)file(1p)pax(1p)