PRINTF(1)

📦
version 9.12 · 46 versions
, in arch rolling

💅 PRINTF(1) — the User Commands era ✨

okay so bestie, welcome to printf(1) — literally one of the User Commands girlies, living in the GNU coreutils house 🏠💖. She formats and prints data, she's been doing it since forever, and she ate. No cap.

🌸 NAME 🌸

printf — format and print data, periodt 💫

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

printf FORMAT [ARGUMENT]...
printf OPTION

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

So basically: you print your ARGUMENT(s) according to FORMAT 💅, OR you just execute according to OPTION like a lazy queen 👑:

  • --help — display this help and exit 🫶
  • --version — output version information and exit 🌈

FORMAT controls the output, exactly like in C printf. The interpreted sequences are (memorize these, fr fr 😭):

  • \" — double quote
  • \\ — backslash
  • \a — alert (bell) 🔔
  • \b — backspace
  • \c — produce no further output 🛑 (she's done talking)
  • \e — escape
  • \f — form feed
  • \n — new line
  • \r — carriage return
  • \t — horizontal tab
  • \v — vertical tab
  • \NNN — byte with octal value NNN (1 to 3 digits)
  • \xHH — byte with hexadecimal value HH (1 to 2 digits)
  • \uHHHH — Unicode (ISO/IEC 10646) character with hex value HHHH (4 digits)
  • \UHHHHHHHH — Unicode character with hex value HHHHHHHH (8 digits)

and also:

  • %% — a single %
  • %b — ARGUMENT as a string with '\' escapes interpreted, except that octal escapes should have a leading 0 like \0NNN
  • %q — ARGUMENT is printed in a format that can be reused as shell input, escaping non-printable characters with the POSIX $'' syntax

plus all the C printf(3) format specifications ending with one of diouxXfaAeEgGcs, with ARGUMENTs converted to proper type first 💖. FORMAT is reused to convert all specified arguments — she doesn't get tired, she just loops 🔁. The table below shows the supported conversion specifiers, with examples including usage of width, precision, and flags:

  • %s — shell format example '[%10s]' 'left pad' → output [ left pad]
  • %s — shell format example '[%-10s]' 'right pad' → output [right pad ]
  • %c %s — shell format example '%c %.3s' un unibyte → output u uni
  • %d %i — shell format example "%'d ;%04i" 1234 '-1' → output 1,234 ;-001
  • %o — shell format example '%#o' $((2#110100100)) → output 0644
  • %u — shell format example '%u' 0xFFFFFFFF → output 4294967295
  • %x — shell format example '0x%08x' 11259375 → output 0x00abcdef
  • %a %f — shell format example '%1$a %1$f' 0.0009765625 → output 0x8p-13 0.000977
  • %e %f — shell format example '%1$e %1$f' 123.456789 → output 1.234568e+02 123.456789
  • %g — shell format example '%1$g %1$.2g' 1.2345678e3 → output 1234.57 1.2e+03
  • %b — shell format example '%bfoo' 'bar\cbaz' qux → output bar
  • %q — shell format example '%q ' 'a' \;b $'c\n' → output a ';b' 'c'$'\n'
🚨 bestie heads up: your shell may have its own version of printf, which usually supersedes the version described here. Please refer to your shell's documentation for details about the options it supports. iykyk 💀

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Written by David MacKenzie. (iconic behavior, we stan 🫶)

🐛 REPORTING BUGS 🐛

Copyright © 2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.

This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. (so like, she's free, but she's not gonna hold your hand, bestie 😭)

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/printf> or available locally via: info '(coreutils) printf invocation'

and that's the whole page, diva 💅✨ this was GNU coreutils 9.12, dated September 2026, and yes she's giving User Commands main character energy the entire time 🌸🦋 — now go format something, bestie, you got this fr fr 💖

📦 where this page comes from