by saying

 char listOfCharacters[50];

you are telling the compiler that 
listOfCharacters is an array of char types that will hold up to 50 characters.

in c and c++ the %s, %d are all placeholders for string or digit data - revise the syntax from the C videos 

(http://www.wibit.net/sites/wibit.net/files/programminginc_-_04_-_output_to_the_console.pdf)

the sprintf loads the digits of the int into the character array. The printf then prints it.

Great question! This is something that we didn't cover very well in our course. Not exactly sure why we overlooked this.. Perhaps we should go back and add it...

sprintf is great and it is often used in a lot of languages. Programmers will call this "S-Print-F" or "Sprint-F" of "String Print-F", and it is used as a String Formatter. You can store a string format result into a character array instead of printing to STDOUT (like in printf). Check out this code:

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
	printf("%s %s", "Hey", "Buddy");
	return 0;
}

Above we are using printf to send a format string of "%s %s" to STDOUT and replacing the %s with two params: "Hey" and "Buddy". Therefore, the command prompt will say:

Hey Buddy

Now, take a look at this code:

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
	char buffer[256];
	sprintf(buffer, "%s %s", "Hey", "Buddy");
	puts(buffer);
	return 0;
}

Above we are using sprintf to store the exact same result into a char[], and then I am printing that result out to STDOUT using puts.

Does this answer your question?

If your browser supports it, our forums rich text formatter has an icon with a yellow highlighter. This is the Synrax Highlighter. Click on that, paste or type your code in the text box and it will be formatted just like mine!