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Format directives

A format directive begins with a %. Then there may be an optional a #, which usually means that the argument should be printed in a "readable" format (that is: if the output is read back, the result should be equal to the orginal argument).

Finally, the format directive is terminated by a single format specification characer, which species what kind of formatting to do.

The format directive %% uses no arguments, and outputs a single %.