Why do I have to specify data type each time in C?

Question

As you can see from the code snippet below, I have declared one char variable and one int variable. When the code gets compiled, it must identify t

Answer 1

The first parameter is a format string. If you're printing a decimal number, it may look like:

• "%d" (decimal number)
• "%5d" (decimal number padded to width 5 with spaces)
• "%05d" (decimal number padded to width 5 with zeros)
• "%+d" (decimal number, always with a sign)
• "Value: %d\n" (some content before/after the number)

etc, see for example Format placeholders on Wikipedia to have an idea what format strings can contain.

Also there can be more than one parameter here:

"%s - %d" (a string, then some content, then a number)