Formatted Output

Print Formats Print Functions Print Conversion Specifiers

Several library functions help you convert data values from encoded internal representations to text sequences that are generally readable by people. You provide a format string as the value of the format argument to each of these functions, hence the term formatted output. The functions fall into two categories.

The byte print functions (declared in <stdio.h>) convert internal representations to sequences of type char, and help you compose such sequences for display: fprintf, printf, sprintf, vfprintf, vprintf, and vsprintf. For these function, a format string is a multibyte string that begins and ends in the initial shift state.

The wide print functions (declared in <wchar.h> and hence added with Amendment 1) convert internal representations to sequences of type wchar_t, and help you compose such sequences for display: fwprintf, swprintf, wprintf, vfwprintf, vswprintf, and vwprintf. For these functions, a format string is a wide-character string. In the descriptions that follow, a wide character wc from a format string or a stream is compared to a specific (byte) character c as if by evaluating the expression wctob(wc) == c.