We could right justify our output using the format specifiers. The field-width specifier tells printf() how many columns on screen should be used while printing a value(as in %wd),here the value is right justified and is padded with blanks on the left. If we include the minus sign in format specifier (as in %-wd), this means left justification is desired and the value will be padded with blanks on the right.
Eg:- main()
{
int a,b;
a=2134;
b=2756;
printf(“%5d /n”,a);
printf(“%-5d /n”,b);
}
The output for “a” would be as
2 1 3 4
The output for “b” would be as
2 7 5 6
For float data type the format is % t.nf where ‘t’ denotes the total width and ‘n’ the number of decimal spaces. For example
main()
{
float x,y;
x= 3.141592;
y=14.4;
printf(“%6.3f \n”,x);
printf(“%-5.2f \n”,y);
}
The output for ‘x’ would be as
3 . 1 4 2
The output for ‘y’ would be as
1 4 . 4 0
Similarly, for formatting a string %ds is used. For example, %10s ,%25s etc. The string could also be formatted using a decimal value, as in %5.3s. Here it specifies how many characters are to be printed.
Example:
main()
{
char text1[ ] = “Hello”;
char text2[ ] = “World”;
printf(“% 10s \n,text1);
printf(“%5.3s \n,text2);
printf(“%-5.3s,text2);
}
The output for text1 would be as
H e l l o
The output for text2 would be as
w o r
The output for text2 would be as
w o r
Special Control Characters
Control characters are invisible on the screen. They have special purposes usually to do with cursor movement. They are written into an ordinary string by typing a backslash haracter \ followed by some other character. These characters are listed below.
| \b |
backspace BS |
| \f |
form feed FF |
| \n |
new line NL |
| \t |
horizontal tab HT |
| \r | carriage return CR (cursor to start of line) |
| \v |
vertical tab |
| \” |
double quote |
| \’ |
single quote character |
| \\ |
backslash character |