Customizing Printf - The GNU C Library

Next: Formatted Input, Previous: Formatted Output, Up: I/O on Streams

### 12.13 Customizing `printf`

The GNU C library lets you define your own custom conversion specifiers for `printf` template strings, to teach `printf` clever ways to print the important data structures of your program.

The way you do this is by registering the conversion with the function `register_printf_function`; see Registering New Conversions. One of the arguments you pass to this function is a pointer to a handler function that produces the actual output; see Defining the Output Handler, for information on how to write this function.

You can also install a function that just returns information about the number and type of arguments expected by the conversion specifier. See Parsing a Template String, for information about this.

The facilities of this section are declared in the header file `printf.h`.

Portability Note: The ability to extend the syntax of `printf` template strings is a GNU extension. ISO standard C has nothing similar.