Text output in Java is generally provided by two simple methods:

System.out.println();     // outputs text to screen and adds a new line at the end

System.out.print();     // outputs text to screen, but does not add a new line

These methods are usually enough for most simple output, but there are cases where more control over the output is required.  For greater control, we can use formatted printing, which is a concept available in many programming languages.

System.out.printf();     // formatted output

Even for simple output, the syntax is different.  Consider the following code, which produces identical results:

With formatted printing, the parameters (inside the brackets) are made up of two components: (1) the string that will be output, in quotes, and (2) the list of variables to use in the string.

In this case, the string is "%d".  The % sign indicates that a variable will be used, and the 'd' indicates that the value will be an integer.  The value itself comes from the list of variables, which in this case is just x (there is only one variable in the list).

See Formatted Output Reference for all of the different flags.

Once we have our flags and variables, we can start working on formatting.  The two most useful types of formatting control:

(1) the space occupied by each value, and

(2) the number of (rounded) decimal places for any fractional component