Print Formatted Text Using printf Method in Java

In Java, formatted text refers to those text that has been processed and arranged according to a specific format. According to the article, we will use the printf() method to learn how to print the formatted text.

Formatted Text using printf() Method

In Java, to print the formatted output or text we have a printf() method. The printf() method allows us to format output to a java.io.PrintStream or java.io.PrintWriter.

These classes also contain a method called format() which can produce the same results, so whatever we read here for the printf() method can also be applied to the format() method.

Following is the syntax of the Java printf() method -

System.out.printf("format-string" [, arg1, arg2, ...]);

Here,

• format-string ? A format string that specifies how the text and values should be arranged. It can contain plain text, format specifiers (like %s, %d, %f, etc.), and escape sequences (like \n and \t).
• args ? Zero or more arguments that will be formatted and inserted into the format string (text).

Example 1

The following is a basic example of printing formatted text using the printf() method and the %s format specifier.

public class formattedText {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      String str = "Tutorialspoint";
      
      // Printing the original string
      System.out.println("The original string: " + str);
      
      // Printing the formatted string using printf()
      System.out.printf("Formatted text: %s", str);
   }
}

Output

Following is the output of the above program:

The original string: Tutorialspoint
Formatted text: Tutorialspoint

Example 2

The following is another example of printing formatted text using the printf() method. Here, we use format specifiers to align the string and integer values within a specified width:

public class formattedText {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      String name = "Adithya";
      int age = 30;
      System.out.printf("%10s - %4d%n", name, age);
   }
}

Output

The above program prints the formatted string with a leading space of 10 characters for the name:

   Adithya -   30