Splunk Core Certified Advanced Power User Practice Test

The %% specifier in printf is specifically designed to output a single percent sign. In many programming and scripting languages, including C and languages that share similar syntax, the percent sign is typically used as a formatting character. Therefore, to print an actual percent symbol, you need to escape it by using two percent signs in succession. When the printf function encounters the %% specifier, it processes it and outputs a single percent sign in the resulting text.

Options that imply formatting specific data types, such as a string, floating point number, or decimal integer, do not apply to the %% specifier. Each of those data types has its own corresponding format specifiers, such as %s for strings, %f for floating point numbers, and %d for decimal integers. Consequently, these options are general formatting features of printf, but they do not relate to the unique function of the %% specifier, which is solely for displaying a percent sign.