CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ccharacterstring-formatting
Aydya
Aydya

Reputation: 1929

Output single character in C

When printing a single character in a C program, must I use "%1s" in the format string? Can I use something like "%c"?

Upvotes: 56

Views: 420809

Answers (5)

klutt
klutt

Reputation: 31379

The easiest way to output a single character is to simply use the putchar function. After all, that's it's sole purpose and it cannot do anything else. It cannot be simpler than that.

Upvotes: 4

Evan Teran
Evan Teran

Reputation: 90432

yes, %c will print a single char:

printf("%c", 'h');

also, putchar/putc will work too. From "man putchar":

#include <stdio.h>

int fputc(int c, FILE *stream);
int putc(int c, FILE *stream);
int putchar(int c);

* fputc() writes the character c, cast to an unsigned char, to stream.
* putc() is equivalent to fputc() except that it may be implemented as a macro which evaluates stream more than once.
* putchar(c); is equivalent to putc(c,stdout).

EDIT:

Also note, that if you have a string, to output a single char, you need get the character in the string that you want to output. For example:

const char *h = "hello world";
printf("%c\n", h[4]); /* outputs an 'o' character */

Upvotes: 105

Douglas Leeder
Douglas Leeder

Reputation: 53310

Be careful of difference between 'c' and "c"

'c' is a char suitable for formatting with %c

"c" is a char* pointing to a memory block with a length of 2 (with the null terminator).

Upvotes: 25

EvilTeach
EvilTeach

Reputation: 28837

char variable = 'x';  // the variable is a char whose value is lowercase x

printf("<%c>", variable); // print it with angle brackets around the character

Upvotes: 3

Roalt
Roalt

Reputation: 8440

As mentioned in one of the other answers, you can use putc(int c, FILE *stream), putchar(int c) or fputc(int c, FILE *stream) for this purpose.

What's important to note is that using any of the above functions is from some to signicantly faster than using any of the format-parsing functions like printf.

Using printf is like using a machine gun to fire one bullet.

Upvotes: 18

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