Editing Printf (section)

===Family===

Variants of {{code|printf}} in the C standard library include:

{{code|fprintf}} outputs to a [[File (computing)|file]] instead of standard output.

{{code|sprintf}} writes to a [[string buffer]] instead of standard output.

{{code|snprintf}} provides a level of safety over {{code|sprintf}} since the caller provides a length ''n'' that is the length of the output buffer in bytes (including space for the trailing nul).

{{code|asprintf}} provides for safety by accepting a string [[Handle (computing)|handle]] (char**) argument. The function [[memory allocation|allocates]] a buffer of sufficient size to contain the formatted text and outputs the buffer via the handle.

For each function of the family, including printf, there is also a variant that accepts a single [[va list|{{code|va_list}}]] argument rather than a variable list of arguments. Typically, these variants start with "v". For example: {{code|vprintf}}, {{code|vfprintf}}, {{code|vsprintf}}.

Generally, printf-like functions return the number of bytes output or -1 to indicate failure.<ref>{{cite web | last=Kerrisk| first=Michael |date=Feb 2, 2025 |title=sprintf(3) — Linux manual page
|website=man7.org |url=https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/sprintf.3.html |access-date=Mar 19, 2025}}</ref>