Java™ How To Program (Early Objects), Tenth Edition

Section 2.4 Displaying Text with printf

• System.out.printf method (p. 43; f means “formatted”) displays formatted data.

• Method printf’s first argument is a format string (p. 44) containing fixed text and/or format specifiers. Each format specifier (p. 44) indicates the type of data to output and is a placeholder for a corresponding argument that appears after the format string.

• Format specifiers begin with a percent sign (%) and are followed by a character that represents the data type. The format specifier %s (p. 44) is a placeholder for a string.

• The %n format specifier (p. 44) is a portable line separator. You cannot use %n in the argument to System.out.print or System.out.println; however, the line separator output by System.out.println ...