String PRINT Format(ed).

I.e. print to string using a given format.

The various members of theprintf family, derived from C where they first appeared (though they hark back to the olden days of BCPL'swritef call along that particular lineage), include:

printf    - print formatted (to standard output).fprintf   - file printf (to a file handle).sprintf   - string printf (to a string).snprintf  - sprintf with added overflow protection.

In addition, there are variants of those starting withv (as invsnprintf) which can take variable arguments likeprintf itself.

By that I mean that they pass around avarargs argument rather than a series of arguments, allowing you to write your ownprintf-like function. I've used this before when developing logging libraries in the past.

sprintf originates from C. Refer to e.g.

http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/clibrary/cstdio/sprintf/

where it says:

Writes into the array pointed by str a C string ...

thus:s(tring)printf(ormatted)

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