Why does C's printf format string have both

Question

Why does C\'s printf format string have both %c and %s?

I know that %c represents a single character and %s repre

Answer 1

Id like to add another point of perspective to this fun question.

Really this comes down to data typing. I have seen answers on here that state that you could provide a pointer to the char, and provide a

"%.1s"

This could indeed be true. But the answer lies in the C designer's trying to provide flexibility to the programmer, and indeed a (albeit small) way of decreasing footprint of your application.

Sometimes a programmer might like to run a series of if-else statements or a switch-case, where the need is to simply output a character based upon the state. For this, hard coding the the characters could indeed take less actual space in memory as the single characters are 8 bits versus the pointer which is 32 or 64 bits (for 64 bit computers). A pointer will take up more space in memory.

If you would like to decrease the size through using actual chars versus pointers to chars, then there are two ways one could think to do this within printf types of operators. One would be to key off of the .1s, but how is the routine supposed to know for certain that you are truly providing a char type versus a pointer to a char or pointer to a string (array of chars)? This is why they went with the "%c", as it is different.

Fun Question :-)