Format Strings in C

What are format strings

Format strings are strings that are used to render and arbitrary number of varied datatype parameters into a string when given as a input to string formatting functions like printf, sprint etc.

Understanding 'printf'

'printf' is a standard format string function in C , Its used to print formatted strings on the screen

Prototype:-

Code:

int printf(const char *format, ...)

The string constant ‘format’ provides a description of the output with placeholders , marked with ‘%’ escape characters , that specifies the type of output the function will produce!

This functions simply inputs n number of terms , Pushes them onto the stack and them pops them off one by one.
This function can be very Dangerous if not used in a proper way Check This

Format Placeholders

Format placeholders are basically the special characters that can be used to format the output or to display integers, strings, floats etc.

Some of the ‘type format’ Placeholders:-

%d for Outputting Integers
%s for Outputting strings
%f for Outputting floats
%x for Outputting hexadecimals
%ld for Outputting long integers

Some of the special Escaped Characters:-

\n for newline
\t for tab
\r for carriage return

Actually there are many of format placeholders supported by format string functions in C , But for the scope of this tutorial we’ll only be concentrating on few of them.

Sample

Code:

 #include<stdio.h>

int main()
{
    int integer = 22;
    float number = 12.224455;

    printf("Hello\nI am in a new line now\n");

    printf("%d\n",integer);
    printf("%f\n",number);
    printf("%x\n",integer);
    return(0);
}

Explanation :-

1. At the starting few lines we declare few variables
2. Then we simply print out a string including some newlines(\n).
3. In the second printf statement we used %d format placeholders to print an integer.
4. In the third printf statement we used %f format placeholders to print a float.
5. In the second printf statement we used %x format placeholders to print the hexadecimal form of ‘22’ i.e ‘16’