2.3 Placeholders

Placeholders

Placeholders are used both to print something to the screen and to take input from the user. They quite literally “hold the place” of the variable in printf() and scanf() statements. Below are the placeholders for the data types we have introduced thus far:

%f → float

%g → double

%c → char

%s → string

%d → int

%li → long

%hi → short

Let’s see these placeholders used in action!

Here is an example of a placeholder used in a printf() statement:


int number = 8;
printf(“The value of number is %d”, number);

There are several new components worth talking about that make up the above code. The first line is where we created a variable called “number” of type int and assigned it the value 8. In the second line, we have our printf() statement, in which we have quotation marks with text we want to display to the user. In addition to just the text, though, we also have a placeholder inside the quotation marks.

Recall that %d is the placeholder for an int value. After the quotation marks, we have a comma and then the name of the variable that %d is holding a place for. This is how the computer knows that we want to display the value of our variable, “number”, to the user. The above code would print out the following:


The value of number is 8

Practice

Repetitiveness

In my code, I use the same name (Anika) and number (15) over and over again! To help me, can you create a variable and replace all occurrences of the number with the variable?


#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
	printf("My name is Anika and I am 15 years old. ");
	printf("My twin sister, also named Anika, is 15 years old. ");
	printf("Our friend, Anika, is also 15 years old. ");
	printf("Together, we all have 15 toy bears, all named Anika. ");

}

Example answer


#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
	char name[] = "Anika";
	int age = 15;

	/*
	match the %s or the %d to each of the variables
	1st %s is for name
	2nd %s is for " and I am "
	%d is for age
	last %s is for " years old"
	*/
	
	printf("My name is %s %s %d %s", name, "and I am", age, "years old.");
	printf("My twin sister, also named %s %s %d %s", name, ", is", age, "years old.");
	printf("Together, we all have %d %s %s", age, "toy bears, all named", name);

}

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2️⃣

2.2 Creating and Naming Variables

4️⃣

2.4 Input

⚖️

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