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printf is a C standard library function that formats text and writes it to standard output. The name, printf is short for print formatted where print refers to output to a printer although the functions are not limited to printer output. The standard library provides many other similar functions that form a family of printf-like functions.
printf(string format, items-to-format) It can take one or more arguments, where the first argument is a string to be written. This string can contain special formatting codes which are replaced by items from the remainder of the arguments. For example, an integer can be printed using the "%d" formatting code, e.g.: printf("%d", 42);
In Unix and Unix-like operating systems, printf is a shell builtin (and utility program [2]) that formats and outputs text like the same-named C function. Originally named for outputting to a printer, it actually outputs to standard output. [3] The command accepts a format string, which specifies how to format values, and a list of values.
The C programming language provides many standard library functions for file input and output.These functions make up the bulk of the C standard library header <stdio.h>. [1] The functionality descends from a "portable I/O package" written by Mike Lesk at Bell Labs in the early 1970s, [2] and officially became part of the Unix operating system in Version 7.
The preprocessor replaces the line #include <stdio.h> with the textual content of the file 'stdio.h', which declares the printf() function among other things. This can also be written using double quotes, e.g. #include "stdio.h". If the filename is enclosed within angle brackets, the file is searched for in the standard compiler include paths.
The \n escape sequence allows for shorter code by specifying the newline in the string literal, and for faster runtime by eliminating the text formatting operation. Also, the compiler can map the escape sequence to a character encoding system other than ASCII and thus make the code more portable.
0x1B (escape, ESC, \e (GCC only), ^[). Introduces an escape sequence. Control characters may be described as doing something when the user inputs them, such as code 3 (End-of-Text character, ETX, ^C) to interrupt the running process, or code 4 (End-of-Transmission character, EOT, ^D), used to end text input on Unix or to exit a Unix shell ...
The next line of the program is a statement that calls (i.e. diverts execution to) a function named printf, which in this case is supplied from a system library. In this call, the printf function is passed (i.e. provided with) a single argument, which is the address of the first character in the string literal "hello, world\n".