Format Specifiers in C Language

Format specifiers are special characters that are used in C language to format the output that is printed on the screen. They represent the type of data that will be printed. The format specifiers are used in conjunction with the printf() and scanf() functions. In this tutorial, we will discuss the format specifiers in detail, along with code examples and a specifier table.

Format specifiers in C are used to specify the data type and format of input and output values. They help define how data should be displayed or read by functions like printf() and scanf(). In this tutorial, we will explore the commonly used format specifiers in C and their corresponding data types.

Format Specifier	Description	Data Type
%d	Decimal integer	int
%ld	Long integer	long
%lld	Long long integer	long long
%u	Unsigned decimal	unsigned int
%lu	Unsigned long	unsigned long
%llu	Unsigned long long	unsigned long long
%f	Floating-point number	float
%lf	Double precision float	double
%c	Character	char
%s	String	char *
%p	Pointer address	void *

The syntax for using format specifiers is as follows:

printf("format string", argument1, argument2, ...);

The format string is a string that contains one or more format specifiers, which are preceded by the '%' character. The arguments are the values to be printed on the screen, and their data type should match the corresponding format specifier.

Here is a code example that uses the format specifiers for different data types:

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
  int num1 = 10;
  long num2 = 100000;
  float num3 = 3.14159;
  double num4 = 3.14159265358979323846;
  char c = 'A';
  char str[] = "Hello World";
  int *ptr = &num1;

  printf("Integer: %d\n", num1);
  printf("Long Integer: %ld\n", num2);
  printf("Float: %f\n", num3);
  printf("Double: %lf\n", num4);
  printf("Character: %c\n", c);
  printf("String: %s\n", str);
  printf("Pointer: %p\n", ptr);
  printf("Octal: %o\n", num1);
  printf("Hexadecimal: %x\n", num1);
  printf("Unsigned Integer: %u\n", num1);

  return 0;
}

Output:

Integer: 10
Long Integer: 100000
Float: 3.141590
Double: 3.141593
Character: A
String: Hello World
Pointer: 0x7ffee39925ec
Octal: 12
Hexadecimal: a
Unsigned Integer: 10

In this example, we declare different variables of different data types, and we use their respective format specifiers to print their values. The printf() function is used to print the values on the screen.

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