Read Appendix A of Effective Perl Programming. (Or say "man 3 printf" in a Linux/Unix shell ... might also help.)

Update: If you need to get the output into a text format (e.g., for redirecting into a file), do this (thanks to jmcnamara for the tip): 

man 3 printf | col -b > printf.txt

[download]

The "col()" command will filter out all the terminal escapes for you.

Update: Why "man 3 printf"? Because there is a printf command, too, and you will get its man page when you just say "man printf". But you want the manpage on the printf C library call, so you have to use "man 3 printf" to indicate you want the printf entry from section 3 of the manpages, which describes (surprise) library calls. See "man man" for more details on the surprisingly useful man command.

Christian Lemburg
Brainbench MVP for Perl
http://www.brainbench.com

In reply to Re: Using printf by clemburg
in thread Using printf by nysus

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