In C can a long printf statement be broken up into multiple lines?

Question

I have the following statement:

printf("name: %s\targs: %s\tvalue %d\tarraysize %d\n", sp->name, sp->args, sp->value, sp->arraysize);

I want to break it up. I tried the following but it doesn't work.

printf("name: %s\t
args: %s\t
value %d\t
arraysize %d\n", 
sp->name, 
sp->args, 
sp->value, 
sp->arraysize);

How can I break it up?

Answer 1

If you want to break a string literal onto multiple lines, you can concatenate multiple strings together, one on each line, like so:

printf("name: %s\t"
"args: %s\t"
"value %d\t"
"arraysize %d\n", 
sp->name, 
sp->args, 
sp->value, 
sp->arraysize);

Answer 2

Just some other formatting options:

printf("name: %s\targs: %s\tvalue %d\tarraysize %d\n", 
        a,        b,        c,        d);

printf("name: %s\targs: %s\tvalue %d\tarraysize %d\n", 
              a,        b,        c,            d);

printf("name: %s\t"      "args: %s\t"      "value %d\t"      "arraysize %d\n", 
        very_long_name_a, very_long_name_b, very_long_name_c, very_long_name_d);

You can add variations on the theme. The idea is that the printf() conversion speficiers and the respective variables are all lined up "nicely" (for some values of "nicely").

Answer 3

C preprocessor offers two options - it can glue adjacent string literals into one, like

printf("foo: %s "
       "bar: %d", foo, bar);

or use backslash as a last character of the line, not counting CR (or CR/LF, if you are from Windowsland):

printf("foo %s \
bar: %d", foo, bar);