Where is the offline reference of the format specifiers (e.g., %i, %s) which are supported by the Bash/system printf command? I've looked in help printf, man 1 printf and man 3 printf without luck.
man 1 printf mentions says it supports
%% a single %
%b ARGUMENT as a string with `\' escapes interpreted, except that octal escapes are of the form \0 or \0NNN
and all C format specifications ending with one of diouxXfeEgGcs, with ARGUMENTs converted to proper type first. Variable widths are handled.
The character list is useful, but doesn't explain the exact semantics of each format specification.
Best Answer
As the man page references the C format specifications, you may want to explore it to get the details. E.g. here: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/printf.html
If you insist on having the offline reference, you might want to install the corresponding man pages pack for C lib, so that you could see
man 3 printf. This man page is a part of man-pages-2.39-15.el5 package on an old RHEL nearest to me.