printf [ -v name ] format [ arg ... ]
       Print the arguments according to the format  specification.  For-
       matting  rules  are  the  same  as used in C. The same escape se-
       quences as for echo are recognised in the format. All  C  conver-
       sion  specifications ending in one of csdiouxXeEfgGn are handled.
       In addition to this, `%b' can be used instead of  `%s'  to  cause
       escape sequences in the argument to be recognised and `%q' can be
       used  to  quote  the  argument in such a way that allows it to be
       reused as shell input. With the numeric format specifiers, if the
       corresponding argument starts with a quote character, the numeric
       value of the following character is used as the number to  print;
       otherwise  the argument is evaluated as an arithmetic expression.
       See the section `Arithmetic Evaluation' in zshmisc(1) for  a  de-
       scription of arithmetic expressions. With `%n', the corresponding
       argument is taken as an identifier which is created as an integer
       parameter.

       Normally,  conversion specifications are applied to each argument
       in order but they can explicitly specify the nth argument  is  to
       be used by replacing `%' by `%n$' and `*' by `*n$'.  It is recom-
       mended that you do not mix references of this explicit style with
       the  normal  style  and  the handling of such mixed styles may be
       subject to future change.

       If arguments remain unused after formatting, the format string is
       reused until all arguments have been  consumed.  With  the  print
       builtin,  this  can be suppressed by using the -r option. If more
       arguments are required by the format than  have  been  specified,
       the behaviour is as if zero or an empty string had been specified
       as the argument.

       The  -v option causes the output to be stored as the value of the
       parameter name, instead of printed. If name is an array  and  the
       format  string  is reused when consuming arguments then one array
       element will be used for each use of the format string.