Why is x printing the size of string?

Question

I am relatively new to C.

Was solving a question and was hit with this line of code.

So why is x printing the size of the string? How exactly does printf work?

#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
    int x;
    x = printf("stackoverflow");
    printf("Value of x:%d\n", x);
    return 0;
}

Output:

Read carefully the documentation of [printf](https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/io/fprintf) — Basile Starynkevitch, Aug 06 '18 at 06:48
According to man page of `printf()`: `Upon successful return, these functions return the number of characters printed`. — Eric, Aug 06 '18 at 06:49
On *nix or OS X, you can open a terminal window and type `man 3 printf` to get the documentation for `printf`. — user3386109, Aug 06 '18 at 06:49
Welcome to SO. For each question you should also tell us what you expected instead of the real result. — Gerhardh, Aug 06 '18 at 07:00
I was expecting a true(1) or false(0) value to be stored in x. Depending if the print statement successfully executed. — Shreyash Sharma, Aug 06 '18 at 07:21

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 06 '18 at 06:50

1

return type of printf is int and it returns the number of characters it printed. So in your case it is returning length of the string.

answered Aug 06 '18 at 06:50

Ajay Shinde

1 Answers1