Bash: Reuse printf variables in output

Question

Is it possible to use the variables passed to printf more than once in the formatting?

For example, with this line:

printf 'Hi %s, welcome to %s. %s is a great place to work. Thanks %s.' "John" "The Icecream Factory"

How can I "reuse" the first and second variables in printf ?

I'm thinking something like:

printf 'Hi %s[1], welcome to %s[2]. %s[1] is a great place to work. Thanks %s[2].' "John" "The Icecream Factory"

... but obviously that's not it.

Desired output

Hi John, welcome to The Icecream Factory. The Icecream Factory is a great place to work. Thanks John.

Actual output

Hi John, welcome to The Icecream Factory.  is a great place to work. Thanks .

Working environment is bash in Ubuntu 20.

Answer 1

While I don't think it's possible using either the built-in bash implementation of printf or the freestanding GNU printf(1) program, if you can target zsh instead, its version of printf supports POSIX-style printf(3) argument indexing:

Normally, conversion specifications are applied to each argument in order but they can explicitly specify the n th argument is to be used by replacing % by %n$ and * by *n$ . It is recommended that you do not mix references of this explicit style with the normal style and the handling of such mixed styles may be subject to future change.

$ printf 'Hi %1$s, welcome to %2$s. %2$s is a great place to work. Thanks %1$s.\n' "John" "The Icecream Factory"
Hi John, welcome to The Icecream Factory. The Icecream Factory is a great place to work. Thanks John.