Where is the man page for the format specifiers in the C function printf?

Question

I cannot find the section for format specifiers in the C printf function. I've done a man printf on my Linux distro and it doesn't provide that information.

So far, I've just been googling everytime I need to find out a format. I'm sure that this question has been asked before on stackoverflow, but I cannot find it.

Are you looking at the man page for the printf command or the function? They're definitely in the function's man page, at least on my system. — Stephen Newell, Dec 02 '20 at 03:49

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 02 '20 at 03:56

The unix manual is divided into sections. The following are the first three:

Command-line utilities (e.g. bash)
System calls (e.g. open)
C functions (e.g. fopen)

man printf returns the first match found, but you don't want information on the printf command-line utility; you want information on the printf C function. As such, you should be using

man 3 printf

Where is the man page for the format specifiers in the C function printf?

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