C printf : conditional format depending on the base of an int value

Question

I have an unsigned int variable x which value is comprised between from 0 and 0xFFFFF and I would like to print it in a way more readable for the user.
If x is greater than 0xF000, print it in hexadecimal, else print it in decimal. So something like this would do it

if (x > 0xF000) 
   printf("%#x", x);
else 
   printf("%u", x)

But I would like to know if there is an handier and smarter way to handle this, like conditional formatting for output depending of their value.

Answer 1

Your 'conditional format' could be specified using the ternary '?' operator, as suggested in the comments:

printf((x > 0xF000) ? "%#x" : "%u", x);

However, as also suggested in the comments, this doesn't really help in terms of readability.

You can also use a string variable as the format argument, for example (in this trivial case):

char fmt[4];
if (x > 0xF000) strcpy(fmt, "%x");
else            strcpy(fmt, "%u"); // You haven't specified what type "x" is, so let's assume "unsigned".
printf(fmt, x);