hello again, Is it possible for the user to specify how many decimal places to format a number in C? I could use switch but the user should be able to specify and number. For example: fprintf(STDOUT, "%4d", num); prints a number to 4 decimal places. Or how do I get the fprintf function to print the number of places in decplaces? int decplaces; ..... ..... fprintf(STDOUT, "%d", num); saddam

Mr. Ex-President, I'll only answer your last question and that'll make everything clear. Use - fprintf(stdout, "%*d", decplaces, num); Hope you've got what you want. Best of luck. Santanu Sen National Institute of Technology Durgapur India

hello, Many thanks, you are the best!! I never thought both my questions would be answered by the same person! As of the pervious one no one seem to answer it and it was beginning to slip away. I am sorry but could you explain what the * is all about and what it does? thanks again. saddam

Hi, It's really great to have such complements from an ex-president. Anyways, let me explain what you want to know. When you write some code segment like int a = 10; fprintf(stdout, "%15d", a); it prints the value of 'a' using 15 places. That is it will print 13 blanks then '10'. You already know that. Now if you write int a = 10; int b = 15; fprintf(stdout, "%*d", b, a); It will generate the same output as the previous one. You may visualize it this way, first it replaces the * sign of the %*d flag with the value of 'b'. That is, it becomes %15d. Now it will print the value of a using this precision. Similarly, were the value of 'b' 8 it would have printed the value of 'a' using %8d. Note that the value of 'b' is not printed. It is only used to set the precision. Hope I am clear enough. Best of luck. Santanu Sen National Institute of Technology Durgapur India