1printf format [ arg ... ] 2 Print the arguments according to the format specification. For- 3 matting rules are the same as used in C. The same escape 4 sequences as for echo are recognised in the format. All C con- 5 version specifications ending in one of csdiouxXeEfgGn are han- 6 dled. In addition to this, `%b' can be used instead of `%s' to 7 cause escape sequences in the argument to be recognised and `%q' 8 can be used to quote the argument in such a way that allows it 9 to be reused as shell input. With the numeric format specifiers, 10 if the corresponding argument starts with a quote character, the 11 numeric value of the following character is used as the number 12 to print otherwise the argument is evaluated as an arithmetic 13 expression. See the section `Arithmetic Evaluation' in zsh- 14 misc(1) for a description of arithmetic expressions. With `%n', 15 the corresponding argument is taken as an identifier which is 16 created as an integer parameter. 17 18 Normally, conversion specifications are applied to each argument 19 in order but they can explicitly specify the nth argument is to 20 be used by replacing `%' by `%n$' and `*' by `*n$'. It is rec- 21 ommended that you do not mix references of this explicit style 22 with the normal style and the handling of such mixed styles may 23 be subject to future change. 24 25 If arguments remain unused after formatting, the format string 26 is reused until all arguments have been consumed. With the print 27 builtin, this can be suppressed by using the -r option. If more 28 arguments are required by the format than have been specified, 29 the behaviour is as if zero or an empty string had been speci- 30 fied as the argument. 31