Explanation for printf string in awk

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

hi all
can any one help me to understand this

bdf -t vfxs | awk '/\//{printf("%-30s%-10s%-10s%-10s%-5s%-10s\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6)}'

i want to understand the numbers %-30S%

2

The percent sign starts a special format string for printf. A character (in this case 's') specifies what kind of data to print, which would be strings in your case. The -nn (eg. -30) is a width-specifier, which means that the string should be left-justified, and no more than 30 characters wide.

For more details see the man page for man printf (POSIX)

3

It just used to format the output .

For example ,
You are printing the string which has 25 characters.If you give %30s when print that string then you will get five space characters in front of the string.
If the string has more that 30characters you will not get the space characters .

4

thanks alot

5

man printf