I am a total noob and the idea of formatting strings is not clear to me. Why would I want to format my string like the one in the example below? Please give a short, clear answer, not like the one in the manual, I have no idea what the manual is trying to say.
$query=sprintf("SELECT COUNT(id) FROM users WHERE UPPER(username) = UPPER('%s')",
mysql_real_escape_string($name));