In C can a long printf statement be broken up into multiple lines?

I have the following statement:

printf("name: %s\targs: %s\tvalue %d\tarraysize %d\n", sp->name, sp->args, sp->value, sp->arraysize);

I want to break it up. I tried the following but it doesn't work.

printf("name: %s\t
args: %s\t
value %d\t
arraysize %d\n", 
sp->name, 
sp->args, 
sp->value, 
sp->arraysize);

How can I break it up?

If you want to break a string literal onto multiple lines, you can concatenate multiple strings together, one on each line, like so:

printf("name: %s\t"
"args: %s\t"
"value %d\t"
"arraysize %d\n", 
sp->name, 
sp->args, 
sp->value, 
sp->arraysize);

The C compiler can glue adjacent string literals into one, like

printf("foo: %s "
       "bar: %d", foo, bar);

The preprocessor can use a backslash as a last character of the line, not counting CR (or CR/LF, if you are from Windowsland):

printf("foo %s \
bar: %d", foo, bar);

Just some other formatting options:

printf("name: %s\targs: %s\tvalue %d\tarraysize %d\n", 
        a,        b,        c,        d);

printf("name: %s\targs: %s\tvalue %d\tarraysize %d\n", 
              a,        b,        c,            d);

printf("name: %s\t"      "args: %s\t"      "value %d\t"      "arraysize %d\n", 
        very_long_name_a, very_long_name_b, very_long_name_c, very_long_name_d);

You can add variations on the theme. The idea is that the printf() conversion speficiers and the respective variables are all lined up "nicely" (for some values of "nicely").

The de-facto standard way to split up complex functions in C is per argument:

printf("name: %s\targs: %s\tvalue %d\tarraysize %d\n", 
       sp->name, 
       sp->args, 
       sp->value, 
       sp->arraysize);

Or if you will:

const char format_str[] = "name: %s\targs: %s\tvalue %d\tarraysize %d\n";
...
printf(format_str, 
       sp->name, 
       sp->args, 
       sp->value, 
       sp->arraysize);

You shouldn't split up the string, nor should you use \ to break a C line. Such code quickly turns completely unreadable/unmaintainable.

I don't think using one printf statement to print string literals as seen above is a good programming practice; rather, one can use the piece of code below:

printf("name: %s\t",sp->name);
printf("args: %s\t",sp->args);
printf("value: %s\t",sp->value);
printf("arraysize: %s\t",sp->name);