Formats and prints ARGUMENTS under control of the FORMAT. Options: -v var assign the output to shell variable VAR rather than display it on the standard output FORMAT is a character string which contains three types of objects: plain characters, which are simply copied to standard output; character escape sequences, which are converted and copied to the standard output; and format specifications, each of which causes printing of the next successive argument. In addition to the standard format specifications described in printf(1) and printf(3), printf interprets: %b expand backslash escape sequences in the corresponding argument %q quote the argument in a way that can be reused as shell input Exit Status: Returns success unless an invalid option is given or a write or assignment error occurs.