printf(1) — Linux manual page

PRINTF(1)                     User Commands                    PRINTF(1)

NAME

       printf - format and print data

SYNOPSIS

       printf FORMAT [ARGUMENT]...
       printf OPTION

DESCRIPTION

       Print ARGUMENT(s) according to FORMAT, or execute according to
       OPTION:

       --help display this help and exit

       --version
              output version information and exit

       FORMAT controls the output as in C printf.  Interpreted sequences
       are:

       \"     double quote

       \\     backslash

       \a     alert (BEL)

       \b     backspace

       \c     produce no further output

       \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)

       %%     a single %

       %b     ARGUMENT as a string with '\' escapes interpreted, except
              that octal escapes are of the form \0 or \0NNN

       %q     ARGUMENT is printed in a format that can be reused as
              shell input, escaping non-printable characters with the
              proposed POSIX $'' syntax.

       and all C format specifications ending with one of diouxXfeEgGcs,
       with ARGUMENTs converted to proper type first.  Variable widths
       are handled.

       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.

AUTHOR

       Written by David MacKenzie.

REPORTING BUGS

       GNU coreutils online help:
       <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
       Report any translation bugs to
       <https://translationproject.org/team/>

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright © 2024 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.

SEE ALSO

       printf(3)

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

COLOPHON

       This page is part of the coreutils (basic file, shell and text
       manipulation utilities) project.  Information about the project
       can be found at ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/⟩.  If you
       have a bug report for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the tarball coreutils-9.5.tar.xz fetched from
       ⟨http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/⟩ on 2024-06-14.  If you
       discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page,
       or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for
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       manual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org

GNU coreutils 9.5              March 2024                      PRINTF(1)

Pages that refer to this page: bash(1), echo(1), git-sh-i18n(1), ps(1), printf(3)

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