printf

350px|thumb|alt=Diagram illustrating syntax of printf function. The first argument to the function is a template string, which may contain format specifiers, which are introduced with the percent sign (%) character. Format specifiers instruct printf how to interpret and output values given in the corresponding arguments which follow the format string. printf replaces the format specifiers with the accordingly-interpreted contents of the remaining arguments, and outputs the result.|An example call to the printf function

'''' is a C standard library function and is also a Linux terminal (shell) command that formats text and writes it to standard output. The function accepts a format C-string argument and a variable number of value arguments that the function serializes per the format string. Mismatch between the format specifiers and count and type of values results in undefined behavior and possibly program crash or other vulnerability.