Re: understanding format specifiers

siliconwafer wrote:

What does a 'format specifier' do?
Suppose I do,
int a = 43;  //decimal number


Only the representation of the number in the source code
is decimal. Inside the memory the number is stored in binary.

The line
int a = 0x2b;
will store the same binary number in memory.
It is not stored in hexadecimal format.


printf("%x",a);
I will get hex equivalent of 43.
Does the format specifier do an implicit "decimal to hex" conversion
before displaying ?


No, in the above example printf gives you a hexadecimal representation
of the value of variable a.

printf("%d\n", a);
prints a decimal representation of variable a.
In both cases printf has to do a "conversion".
It has to work with the value of a to get a certain
representation of this value. The format specifier
tells printf which representation you want.

regards
Ralf
.

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