What is the purpose of the h and hh modifiers for printf?

by

One possible reason: for symmetry with the use of those modifiers in the formatted input functions? I know it wouldn’t be strictly necessary, but maybe there was value seen for that?

Although they don’t mention the importance of symmetry for the “h” and “hh” modifiers in the C99 Rationale document, the committee does mention it as a consideration for why the “%p” conversion specifier is supported for fscanf() (even though that wasn’t new for C99 – “%p” support is in C90):

Input pointer conversion with %p was added to C89, although it is obviously risky, for symmetry with fprintf.

In the section on fprintf(), the C99 rationale document does discuss that “hh” was added, but merely refers the reader to the fscanf() section:

The %hh and %ll length modifiers were added in C99 (see ยง7.19.6.2).

I know it’s a tenuous thread, but I’m speculating anyway, so I figured I’d give whatever argument there might be.

Also, for completeness, the “h” modifier was in the original C89 standard – presumably it would be there even if it wasn’t strictly necessary because of widespread existing use, even if there might not have been a technical requirement to use the modifier.

More Related Contents:

  1. Please explain the difference in the printfs below
  2. char c[]=”Albus”; printf(“%c”, c); [closed]
  3. Correct format specifier for double in printf
  4. How do you format an unsigned long long int using printf?
  5. What does “%.*s” mean in printf?
  6. call printf using va_list
  7. Does printf(“%x”,1) invoke undefined behavior?
  8. How to printf “unsigned long” in C?
  9. Why is printf with a single argument (without conversion specifiers) deprecated?
  10. What precisely does the %g printf specifier mean?
  11. Why does printf not flush after the call unless a newline is in the format string?
  12. Printing leading 0’s in C
  13. How should I print types like off_t and size_t?
  14. printf format specifiers for uint32_t and size_t
  15. printf adds extra `FFFFFF` to hex print from a char array [duplicate]
  16. What is the argument for printf that formats a long?
  17. How are variable arguments implemented in gcc?
  18. Platform independent size_t Format specifiers in c?
  19. using printf to print out floating values
  20. Whitespace before %c specification in the format specifier of scanf function in C
  21. How to use “zd” specifier with `printf()`?
  22. Unsigned values in C
  23. Passing too many arguments to printf
  24. printf with “%d” of numbers starting with 0 (ex “0102”) giving unexpected answer (ex ‘”66″)
  25. Wrong format specifiers in scanf (or) printf
  26. What primitive data type is time_t? [duplicate]
  27. Is it possible to print out only a certain section of a C-string, without making a separate substring?
  28. Printf long long int in C with GCC?
  29. cross-platform printing of 64-bit integers with printf
  30. What is the difference between %f and %lf in C?

Leave a Comment