This offers more structured output than putchar. Its arguments are, in order; a control string, which controls what gets printed, followed by a list of values to be substituted for entries in the control string.
There are several more types available. For full details type
man printf
on your UNIX system.
It is also possible to insert numbers into the control string to control field widths for values to be displayed. For example %6d would print a decimal value in a field 6 spaces wide, %8.2f would print a real value in a field 8 spaces wide with room to show 2 decimal places. Display is left justified by default, but can be right justified by putting a - before the format information, for example %-6d, a decimal integer right justified in a 6 space field.
Go to Formatted I/O 
Go to Index
Go to scanf