ALX Software Enginering Printf Team Project. This function _printf() writes output to stdout, the standard output stream with the format and options without making use of any of the standard library files. It was written to use a local buffer of 1024 bytes when printing although it can print larger sets of data.

The _printf() function returns the total number of characters printed to the stdout(excluding the null byte at the end of strings) after a successful execution.

If an output error is encountered, a negative value of -1 is returned.

The prototype of this function is: int _printf(const char format, ...);

This means that it has one mandatory format argument, and an extra number of arguments that can be none, or many.

Format of the format string

The format string is a character string starting and ending with double quotes. The format string is composed of zero or more directives; ordinary characters (not %), and conversion specifications, each of which results in fetching zero or more subsequent arguments.

Each conversion specification is introduced by the character % and ends with a conversion specifier. In between there may be (in this order):

Zero or more flags

An optional field width

An optional precision modifier

An optional length modifier. By Obi slok.