C Format Specifiers

In this tutorial, you will learn various format specifiers used in the C programming language with the help of examples.

The format specifiers are used for formatted input and output in the C programming language. It is the method to tell the compiler what types of data a variable is holding during taking input using scanf() function and printing using printf() function. The format specifiers always start with a '%' character. Some of the examples are '%d', '%c', etc.

Following is the list of some of the most commonly used format specifiers.

We can also some parts with the format specifiers. They are as below:

• A minus symbol (-) sign tells left alignment.
• A number after % specifies the minimum field width. If a string is less than the width, it will be filled with spaces.
• A period (.) is used to separate field width and precision.

Let’s check an example that covers most of the format specifiers mentioned above.

Example

#include <stdio.h>
void main() {
//printing character data with %c
char ch = 'A';
printf("%c\n", ch);

//print decimal or integer data with d and i
int x = -10, y = 20;
printf("%d\n", x);
printf("%u\n", y);

float f = 15.43;
printf("%f\n", f); //printing float value
printf("%e\n", f); //printing in scientific notation

int a = 56;
printf("%o\n", a); //printing in octal format
printf("%x\n", a); //printing in hex format

char str[] = "Hello World";
printf("%s\n", str); //printing string data
printf("%15s\n", str); //shift to the right 15 characters including the string
printf("%-10s\n", str); //left align
printf("%15.5s\n", str); //shift to the right 15 characters including the string, and print string up to 5 character
printf("%-15.5s\n", str); //left align and print string up to 5 character
}

Output