printf.1 (2010 09)

printf(1) printf(1)

If LC_CTYPE or LC_MESSAGES is not speciﬁed in the environment or is set to the empty string, the

value of LANG is used as a default for each unspeciﬁed or empty variable. If

LANG is not speciﬁed or is

set to the empty string, a default of "C" (see lang (5)) is used instead of

LANG.

If any internationalization variable contains an invalid setting, printf behaves as if all internationaliza-

tion variables are set to "C". See environ (5).

International Code Set Support

Single and multi-byte character code sets are supported.

RETURN VALUE

printf exits with one of the following values:

0 Successful completion.

>0 Errors occurred; the exit value is increased by one for each error that occurred up to a max-

imum of 255.

DIAGNOSTICS

If an argument cannot be converted into a form suitable for the corresponding conversion speciﬁcation, or

for any other reason cannot be correctly printed, a diagnostic message is printed to standard error, the

argument is output as a string form as it was given on the command line, and the exit value is incre-

mented.

EXAMPLES

The following command prints the number 123 in octal, hexadecimal and ﬂoating point formats in their

alternate form

printf "%#o, %#x, %#X, %#f, %#g, %#e\n" 123 123 123 123 123 123

resulting in the following output

0173, 0x7b, 0X7B, 123.000000, 123.000, 1.230000e+02

Print the outputs with their corresponding ﬁeld widths and precision:

printf "%.6d, %10.6d, %.6f, %.6e, %.6s\n" 123 123 1.23 123.4 MoreThanSix

resulting in the following output

000123, 000123, 1.230000, 1.234000e+02, MoreTh