printf
¶The GNU C Library lets you define your own custom conversion specifiers
for printf
template strings, to teach printf
clever ways
to print the important data structures of your program.
The way you do this is by registering the conversion with the function
register_printf_function
; see Registering New Conversions.
One of the arguments you pass to this function is a pointer to a handler
function that produces the actual output; see Defining the Output Handler, for information on how to write this function.
You can also install a function that just returns information about the number and type of arguments expected by the conversion specifier. See Parsing a Template String, for information about this.
The facilities of this section are declared in the header file printf.h.
Portability Note: The ability to extend the syntax of
printf
template strings is a GNU extension. ISO standard C has
nothing similar. When using the GNU C compiler or any other compiler
that interprets calls to standard I/O functions according to the rules
of the language standard it is necessary to disable such handling by
the appropriate compiler option. Otherwise the behavior of a program
that relies on the extension is undefined.