A sometimes handy trick is registering your own specifiers for printf. Although it is GNU only, it is still a handy trick. For example, glibc comes with a built-in extension to reduce a float for you, e.g.

$ cat test.c
#include 
#include 

int main(void)
{
        float bytes = 1024.0 * 1024.0 * 1024.0;

        register_printf_function ('b', printf_size, printf_size_info);

        printf("%.0bB\n", bytes);

}

$ gcc -o test test.c
$ ./test
1gB

If we register the handler with a capital letter, the base will be 1000, otherwise it is 1024. It is unfortunate that this doesn't appear to support SI units, but it is still handy (and may one day).

The glibc manual has full details on customising printf further. You can easily add a specifier for your own structures, etc.

posted at: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 10:02 | in /code/c | permalink | add comment (0 others)