What does printf return?

Question

Today in my interview, the interviewer asked: printf is a function and every function returns something; int, void, float, etc. Now what does printf return as it's a function?

Answer 1

Not every function returns something, which is indicated by using void:

void function_returns_nothing(void);

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printf is a function (declared in <stdio.h>) and it returns an int, which is the number of characters outputted. If an error occurs, the number is negative.

Answer 2

int. On success, the total number of characters written is returned. On failure, a negative number is returned.

See reference here

Answer 3

printf()'s reference from MSDN:

Returns the number of characters printed, or a negative value if an error occurs.

Answer 4

This function return result of interaction with "Real World". ;)