It may be old-fashioned, but I still find printf (and sprintf and _vsnprintf) incredibly useful, both for printing debug output and for generating formatted strings.
Here are a few lesser-known formats that I use again and again. See MSDN for the full reference.
A quick review of some of the basics
%04x - 4-digit hex number with leading zeroes
%x prints an int in hexadecimal.
%4x prints a hex int, right-justified to 4 places. If it's less than 4 digits, it's preceded by spaces. If it's more than 4 digits, you get the full number.
%04x prints a hex int, right-justified to 4 places. If it's less than 4 digits, it's preceded by zeroes. If it's more than 4 digits, you get the full number, but no leading zeroes.
Similarly, %d prints a signed int in decimal, and %u prints an unsigned int in decimal.
Not so similarly, %c prints a character and %s prints a string. For wide (Unicode) strings, prefixing with l (ell, or w): %lc and %ls.
Note: For the Unicode variants, such as wprintf and friends, %c and %s print wide strings. To force a narrow string, no matter which variant, use the %h size prefix, and to force a wide string, use the %l size prefix; e.g., %hs and %lc.
%p - pointer
The wrong way to print a pointer is to use %x. The right way is to use %p. It's portable to Win64, as well as to all other operating systems.
Everyone should know this one, but many don't.
%I64d, %I64u, %I64x - 64-bit integers
To print 64-bit numbers (__int64), use the I64 size prefix.
%Iu, %Id, %Ix - ULONG_PTR
ULONG_PTR, LONG_PTR, and DWORD_PTR are numeric types that are as wide as a pointer. In other words, they map to ULONG, LONG, and DWORD respectively on Win32, and ULONGLONG, LONGLONG, and ULONGLONG on Win64.
The I size prefix (capital-i, not lowercase-L) is what you need to print *LONG_PTR on Win32 and Win64.
%*d - runtime width specifier
If you want to calculate the width of a field at runtime, you can use %*. This says the next argument is the width, followed by whatever type you want to print.
For example, the following can be used to print a tree:
void Tree::Print(Node* pNode, int level)
{
if (NULL != pNode)
{
Print(pNode->Left, level+1);
printf("%*d%s"n", 2 * level, pNode->Key);
Print(pNode->Right, level+1);
}
}
%.*s - print a substring
With a variable precision, you can print a substring, or print a non-NUL-terminated string, if you know its length. printf("%.*s"n", sublen, str) prints the first sublen characters of str.
[2005/7/19: fixed a typo in previous sentence (%.s -> %.*s). A little elaboration on the syntax: . in a printf format specification is followed by the precision. For strings, the precision specificies how many characters will be printed. A precision of * indicates that the precision is the next argument on the stack. If the precision is zero, then nothing is printed. If a string has a precision specification, its length is ignored.]
%.0d - print nothing for zero
I've occasionally found it useful to suppress output when a number is zero, and %.0d is the way to do it. (If you attempt to print a non-zero number with this zero-precision specifier, it will be printed.) Similarly, %.0s swallows a string.
%#x - print a leading 0x
If you want printf to automatically generate 0x before hex numbers, use %#x instead of %x. .
Security
Never use an inputted string as the format argument: printf(str). Instead, use printf("%s", str). The former is a stack smasher waiting to happen.
%n is dangerous and disabled by default in VS2005.
Don't use sprintf. Use the counted version, _snprintf or _vsnprintf instead. Better still, use the StrSafe.h functions, StringCchPrintf and StringCchVPrintf, to guarantee that your strings are NUL-terminated.
Note:
printf各项的意义介绍如下:
1) 类型:类型字符用以表示输出数据的类型,其格式符和意义如下表所示:
格式字符 意义
d 以十进制形式输出带符号整数(正数不输出符号)
o 以八进制形式输出无符号整数(不输出前缀0)
x,X 以十六进制形式输出无符号整数(不输出前缀Ox)
u 以十进制形式输出无符号整数
f 以小数形式输出单、双精度实数
e,E 以指数形式输出单、双精度实数
g,G 以%f或%e中较短的输出宽度输出单、双精度实数
c 输出单个字符
s 输出字符串
2) 标志:标志字符为-、+、#、空格四种,其意义下表所示:
标 志 意义
- 结果左对齐,右边填空格
+ 输出符号(正号或负号)
空格 输出值为正时冠以空格,为负时冠以负号
# 对c,s,d,u类无影响;对o类,在输出时加前缀o;对x类,在输出时加前缀0x;对e,g,f 类
当结果有小数时才给出小数点
3) 输出最小宽度: 用十进制整数来表示输出的最少位数。若实际位数多于定义的宽度,则按实际位数输出,若实际位数少于定义的宽度则补以空格或0。
4) 精度: 精度格式符以“.”开头,后跟十进制整数。本项的意义是:如果输出数字,则表示小数的位数;如果输出的是字符,则表示输出字符的个数;若实际位数大于所定义的精度数,则截去超过的部分。
5) 长度:长度格式符为h,l两种,h表示按短整型量输出,l表示按长整型量输出。