Printing a variable number of arguments to a format string

As others said there is no direct way of doing that. You can build your own function which dumps the values of strings at the correct format specifiers. Below function makes a temporary format string for each %s and appends it to the earlier build string using snprintf().

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

#define MAXBUF      4096

char *strmaker(char* format, int num_args, char** strings)
{
    char* prnt = calloc(sizeof(char), MAXBUF);
    int prnt_ct = 0;
    char* tmp_fmt = malloc(strlen(format) + 1); // Prepare for the worst case (format == tmp_fmt).
    int fmt_ct = 0;

    /* Append the strings to the prnt buffer */

    for (int i = 0; i < num_args; i++) {
        char* s_loc = strstr(format + fmt_ct, "%s");    // Search the format-string for string specifier (%s)
        if (s_loc == NULL)
            return prnt;

        int tmp_fmt_len = (int) (s_loc + 2 - format - fmt_ct);  // +2 for %s
        strncpy(tmp_fmt, format + fmt_ct, tmp_fmt_len); // Make tmp_fmt
        tmp_fmt[tmp_fmt_len] = '\0';
        fmt_ct = fmt_ct + tmp_fmt_len;

        int p_return = snprintf(prnt + prnt_ct, MAXBUF - prnt_ct, tmp_fmt, strings[i]);   // If no error, return the number characters printed excluding nul (man page)

        if (p_return >= MAXBUF - prnt_ct)   // If buffer overflows (man page)
            return prnt;

        prnt_ct = prnt_ct + p_return;   // Update the index location.
    }

    return prnt;
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) // Pass format and arguments
{
    if (argc <= 1)
       return -1;

    char *s = strmaker(argv[1], argc - 2, argv + 2);
    printf("%s\n", s);
    free(s);

    return 0;
}

Terminal Session:

$ ./a.out '%s %s %s' 1 2 3 
1 2 3
$ ./a.out 'one %s two %s three %s' 1 2 3 
one 1 two 2 three 3
$ ./a.out 'one %s two %s three' 1 2 3 
one 1 two 2
$ ./a.out 'one %s two %s three %s' 1 2 
one 1 two 2