How to escape the % (percent) sign in C's printf

Question

How do you escape the % sign when using printf in C?

printf("hello\%"); /* not like this */ 

Answer 1

You can escape it by posting a double '%' like this: %%

Using your example:

printf("hello%%"); 

Escaping the '%' sign is only for printf. If you do:

char a[5]; strcpy(a, "%%"); printf("This is a's value: %s\n", a); 

It will print: This is a's value: %%

Answer 2

As others have said, %% will escape the %.

Note, however, that you should never do this:

char c[100]; char *c2; ... printf(c); /* OR */ printf(c2); 

Whenever you have to print a string, always, always, always print it using

printf("%s", c) 

to prevent an embedded % from causing problems (memory violations, segmentation faults, etc.).