Linux and Unix Shell Programming

printf

Format:

printf format arguments 

This command prints formatted text to the standard output, and is similar to awk ’s printf function.

Format:

Format can contain three different types of items; we will only look at formatting. The sequence to format is:

%[- +]m.nx 

where the hyphen will left-justify a field. Generally speaking the m is used to represent the length of a field and n is the maximum length of the field.

The % sign is preceded with any of the following to format characters:

s	string
c	character
d	decimal
x	hexadecimal number
o	octal number

Printf by itself does not generate a new line; you have to use the escape sequence for that. Here is a list of the most common escape sequences.

\a	sound the bell
\b	backspace
\r	carriage ...