I don't know why Wikipedia lists Mathematica as a programming language with printf. I just couldn't find the equivalent in Mathematica. My specific task is to process a list of data files with padded numbers, which I used to do it in bash with fn=$(printf "filename_%05d" $n) The closest function I found in Mathematica is PaddedForm. And after some trial and error, I got it with "filename_" <> PaddedForm[ Round@#, 4, NumberPadding -> {"0", ""} ]& It is very odd that I have to use the number 4 to get the result similar to what I get from "%05d". I don't understand this behavior at all. Can someone explain it to me? And is it the best way to achieve what I used to in bash?