printf

Format and print text. More information: https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/printf-invocation.html.

• Print a text message:

printf "%s\n" "Hello world"

• Print an integer in bold blue:

printf "\e[1;34m%.3d\e[0m\n" 42

• Print a float number with the Unicode Euro sign:

printf "\u20AC %.2f\n" 123.4

• Print a text message composed with environment variables:

printf "var1: %s\tvar2: %s\n" "$VAR1" "$VAR2"

• Store a formatted message in a variable (does not work on Zsh):

printf -v myvar "This is %s = %d\n" "a year" 2016

• Print a hexadecimal, octal and scientific number:

printf "hex=%x octal=%o scientific=%e" 0xFF 0377 100000