What's the difference between print and printf in command?

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

For example, in this command:

ls /etc/rc0.d/ -print
ls /etc/rc0.d/ -printf

The outputs are quite different, why?

2

Because you supplied different arguments :p.

print is probably misleading in this case - those are individual parameters 'p', 'r', etc. You should check the man page for ls to find out what each parameter actually does.

3

Sorry, I didn't get what you mean?

4

What CarloM means, is that they are not a single "-print" or "-printf" options, but rather 5 of 6 individual option flags, equivalent to:

ls -p -r -i -n -t /etc/rc0.d/

ls -p -r -i -n -t -f /etc/rc0.d/
5

Ok, I see, actually I think the difference should happen for the �f'. But what I got is as follows, a lot of difference:

Henry@^_^> ls /etc/rc0.d/ -printf
263966 S30urandom       263974 S90halt                 263969 S40umountfs
270822 README           263964 S10unattended-upgrades  263965 S20sendsigs
263967 S31umountnfs.sh  262250 ./                      263962 K74bluetooth
262145 ../              263961 K20speech-dispatcher
263968 S35networking    263972 S60umountroot

Henry@^_^> ls /etc/rc0.d/ -print
total 4
263965 lrwxrwxrwx 1 0 0  18 2011-09-22 00:33 S20sendsigs -> ../init.d/sendsigs
263964 lrwxrwxrwx 1 0 0  29 2011-09-22 00:33 S10unattended-upgrades -> ../init.d/unattended-upgrades
263962 lrwxrwxrwx 1 0 0  19 2011-09-22 00:33 K74bluetooth -> ../init.d/bluetooth
263961 lrwxrwxrwx 1 0 0  27 2011-09-22 00:33 K20speech-dispatcher -> ../init.d/speech-dispatcher
263974 lrwxrwxrwx 1 0 0  14 2011-09-22 00:33 S90halt -> ../init.d/halt
263972 lrwxrwxrwx 1 0 0  20 2011-09-22 00:33 S60umountroot -> ../init.d/umountroot
263969 lrwxrwxrwx 1 0 0  18 2011-09-22 00:33 S40umountfs -> ../init.d/umountfs
263967 lrwxrwxrwx 1 0 0  22 2011-09-22 00:33 S31umountnfs.sh -> ../init.d/umountnfs.sh
263966 lrwxrwxrwx 1 0 0  17 2011-09-22 00:33 S30urandom -> ../init.d/urandom
263968 lrwxrwxrwx 1 0 0  20 2011-10-16 09:47 S35networking -> ../init.d/networking
270822 -rw-r--r-- 1 0 0 353 2011-12-15 14:40 README
6

From one example of man ls , a man page which you may wish to read on your system.

           -f   Interpret each argument as a directory and list the name
                found in each slot.  This option disables -l (ell), -r, -s,
                and -t, and enables -a; the order is the order in which
                entries appear in the directory.

Your correct command should probably be just:

ls -la /etc/rc0.d
1 Like
7

Oh, I should really read the man page carefully...
Thanks a lot!

1 Like
8

On your system the /etc/rc0.d (and similar /etc/rc?.d directories) are special in that they contain soft links to scripts in /etc/init.d . By convention each script expects a parameter (e.g. start or stop or another system-defined value).
See man rc .