Splunk Core Certified Advanced Power User Practice Test

In the context of the `printf` function in programming, the flag character that ensures the output is left-justified is indeed the hyphen (-). When you use this flag in a formatting string, it modifies the default behavior of `printf`, which typically right-justifies the output.

For instance, if you specify a format like `%-10s` when printing a string, it will allocate a width of 10 characters for the output, and the text will be aligned to the left within that space. If the string is shorter than 10 characters, spaces will be added to the right of the string to fill the remaining width.

This left justification is particularly useful for creating aligned columns of text in console output, making the output more readable. In contrast, the other flag characters serve different purposes: the plus sign (+) indicates that a sign should be included for both positive and negative numbers, while the zero (0) flag is used for zero-padding numbers, and using a single quote (') is not a recognized flag in this context.