I would like to print superscript and subscript with printf, like x¹? - c

Question

I want to print out a polynomial expression in c but i don't know print x to the power of a number with printf

Answer 1

It's far from trivial unfortunately. You cannot achieve what you want with printf. You need wprintf. Furthermore, it's not trivial to translate between normal and superscript. You would like a function like this:
wchar_t digit_to_superscript(int d) {
wchar_t table[] = { // Unicode values
0x2070,
0x00B9, // Note that 1, 2 and 3 does not follow the pattern
0x00B2, // That's because those three were common in various
0x00B3, // extended ascii tables. The rest did not exist
0x2074, // before unicode
0x2075,
0x2076,
0x2077,
0x2078,
0x2079,
};
return table[d];
}
This function could of course be changed to handle other characters too, as long as they are supported. And you could also write more complete functions operating on complete strings.
But as I said, it's not trivial, and it cannot be done with simple format strings to printf, and not even to wprintf.
Here is a somewhat working example. It's usable, but it's very short because I have omitted all error checking and such. Shortest possible to be able to use a negative float number as exponent.
#include <wchar.h>
#include <locale.h>
wchar_t char_to_superscript(wchar_t c) {
wchar_t digit_table[] = {
0x2070, 0x00B9, 0x00B2, 0x00B3, 0x2074,
0x2075, 0x2076, 0x2077, 0x2078, 0x2079,
};
if(c >= '0' && c <= '9') return digit_table[c - '0'];
switch(c) {
case '.': return 0x22C5;
case '-': return 0x207B;
}
}
void number_to_superscript(wchar_t *dest, wchar_t *src) {
while(*src){
*dest = char_to_superscript(*src);
src++;
dest++;
}
dest++;
*dest = 0;
}
And a main function to demonstrate:
int main(void) {
setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "");
double x = -3.5;
wchar_t wstr[100], a[100];
swprintf(a, 100, L"%f", x);
wprintf(L"Number as a string: %ls\n", a);
number_to_superscript(wstr, a);
wprintf(L"Number as exponent: x%ls\n", wstr);
}
Output:
Number as a string: -3.500000
Number as exponent: x⁻³⋅⁵⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰
In order to make a complete translator, you would need something like this:
size_t superscript_index(wchar_t c) {
// Code
}
wchar_t to_superscript(wchar_t c) {
static wchar_t huge_table[] {
// Long list of values
};
return huge_table[superscript_index(c)];
}
Remember that this cannot be done for all characters. Only those whose counterpart exists as a superscript version.

Answer 2

Unfortunately, it is not possible to output formatted text with printf.
(Of course one could output HTML format, but this then would need to be fed into an interpreter first for correct display)
So you cannot print text in superscript format in the general case.
What you have found is the superscript 1 as a special character. However this is only possible with 1 and 2, if I remember correctly (and only for the right code-page, not in plain ASCII).
The common way to print "superscripts" is to use the x^2, x^3 syntax. This is commonly understood.
An alternative is provided by klutt's answer. If you switch to unicode by using wprintf instead of printf you could use all superscript characters from 0 to 9. Even though, I am not sure how multi-digit exponents look like in a fixed-width terminal it works in principle.

Answer 3

If you want to print superscript 1, you need to use unicode. You can combine unicode superscripts to write a multi-digit number.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <wchar.h>
#include <locale.h>
int main() {
setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "");
wchar_t one = 0x00B9;
wchar_t two = 0x00B2;
wprintf(L"x%lc\n", one);
wprintf(L"x%lc%lc\n", one, two);
}
Output:
$ clang ~/lab/unicode.c
$ ./a.out
x¹
x¹²
Ref: https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+00B9