printf with multiple columns

Question

This function prints every number starting from 0000 to 1000.

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    int i = 0;
    while ( i <= 1000 ) {
        printf( "%04d\n", i);
        i = i + 1; 
    }
    return 0;
}

The output looks like this:

0000
0001
0002
etc..

How can I make this more presentable using three different columns (perhaps using \t ) to have the output look like this:

0000 0001 0002
0003 0004 0005
etc..

Answer 1

This is how I'd do it, to eliminate the potentially expensive if/?: statement:

char nl[3] = {' ', ' ', '\n'};
while ( i <= 1000 ) {
   printf("%04d%c", i, nl[i%3]);
   ++i; 
}

Note that the modulo division may be much more expensive than the branching anyhow, but this depends on your architecture.