Print C Format specifiers in a string independently

Question

I have a field 'time' in my Mysql server and want to query to database to get this field in my C program as below:

select * from tbl where str_to_date(time, '%M %d %Y %H:%i:%s') > given_date

Now the problem is printing format specifiers in my query string. How to print %d, %i and %s in the query string?

Answer 1

If you want to use % in a formatting string, without using it as a format specifier, use %% instead:

char buffer[1024] = {};

char query_string[] = { 
      "select * from tbl where str_to_date(time, '%%M %%d %%Y %%H:%%i:%%s') > '%s'"
};

char given_date[] = { "03 4 2014 14:55:21" };

sprintf(buffer, query_string, given_date);

printf(buffer);

Output:

select * from tbl where str_to_date(time, '%M %d %Y %H:%i:%s') > '03 4 2014 14:55:21'