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Diffstat (limited to 'Doc/help/printf')
| -rw-r--r-- | Doc/help/printf | 35 |
1 files changed, 35 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Doc/help/printf b/Doc/help/printf new file mode 100644 index 000000000..e18ca3ea4 --- /dev/null +++ b/Doc/help/printf @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +printf [ -v name ] format [ arg ... ] + Print the arguments according to the format specification. For- + matting rules are the same as used in C. The same escape se- + quences as for echo are recognised in the format. All C conver- + sion specifications ending in one of csdiouxXeEfgGn are handled. + In addition to this, `%b' can be used instead of `%s' to cause + escape sequences in the argument to be recognised and `%q' can + be used to quote the argument in such a way that allows it to be + reused as shell input. With the numeric format specifiers, if + the corresponding argument starts with a quote character, the + numeric value of the following character is used as the number + to print; otherwise the argument is evaluated as an arithmetic + expression. See the section `Arithmetic Evaluation' in zsh- + misc(1) for a description of arithmetic expressions. With `%n', + the corresponding argument is taken as an identifier which is + created as an integer parameter. + + Normally, conversion specifications are applied to each argument + in order but they can explicitly specify the nth argument is to + be used by replacing `%' by `%n$' and `*' by `*n$'. It is rec- + ommended that you do not mix references of this explicit style + with the normal style and the handling of such mixed styles may + be subject to future change. + + If arguments remain unused after formatting, the format string + is reused until all arguments have been consumed. With the print + builtin, this can be suppressed by using the -r option. If more + arguments are required by the format than have been specified, + the behaviour is as if zero or an empty string had been speci- + fied as the argument. + + The -v option causes the output to be stored as the value of the + parameter name, instead of printed. If name is an array and the + format string is reused when consuming arguments then one array + element will be used for each use of the format string. |