What does printf in bash do?

What Is the Bash printf Function? As the name suggests, printf is a function that prints formatted strings of text. That means you can write a string structure (the format) and later fill it in with values (the arguments). If you’re familiar with the C/C++ programming languages, you might already know how printf works.

What does printf do in awk?

With printf you can specify the width to use for each item, as well as various formatting choices for numbers (such as what output base to use, whether to print an exponent, whether to print a sign, and how many digits to print after the decimal point).