What does %S mean in PHP, HTML or XML?
$num = 5;
$location = 'tree';
$format = 'There are %d monkeys in the %s';
echo sprintf($format, $num, $location);
Will output: "There are 5 monkeys in the tree."
%s is a type specifier which will be replaced to valuable's value (string) in case of %s.
Besides %s you can use other specifiers, most popular are below:
d - the argument is treated as an integer, and presented as a (signed) decimal number.
f - the argument is treated as a float, and presented as a floating-point number (locale aware).
s - the argument is treated as and presented as a string.
with printf or sprintf characters preceded by the % sign are placeholders (or tokens). They will be replaced by a variable passed as an argument.
Example:
$str1 = 'best';
$str2 = 'world';
$say = sprintf('Tivie is the %s in the %s!', $str1, $str2);
echo $say;
This will output:
Tivie is the best in the world!
Note: There are more placeholders (%s for string, %d for dec number, etc...)
Order:
The order in which you pass the arguments counts. If you switch $str1 with $str2 as
$say = sprintf('Tivie is the %s in the %s!', $str2, $str1);
it will print
"Tivie is the world in the best!"
You can, however, change the reading order of arguments like this:
$say = sprintf('Tivie is the %2$s in the %1$s!', $str2, $str1);
which will print the sentence correctly.
Also, keep in mind that PHP is a dynamic language and does not require (or support) explicit type definition. That means it juggles variable types as needed. In sprint it means that if you pass a "string" as argument for a number placeholder (%d), that string will be converted to a number (int, float...) which can have strange results. Here's an example:
$onevar = 2;
$anothervar = 'pocket';
$say = sprintf('I have %d chocolate(s) in my %d.', $onevar, $anothervar);
echo $say;
this will print
I have 2 chocolate(s) in my 0.
More reading at PHPdocs
In printf, %s is a placeholder for data that will be inserted into the string. The extra arguments to printf are the values to be inserted. They get associated with the placeholders positionally: the first placeholder gets the first value, the second the second value, and so on.