What is the Return Value from Printf() Function

Printf function always returns the number of characters printed by the printf function. Let us see this in brief with an example:

main()

{
int a=10;
printf(“%d,printf(“%d %d %d,a,a,a));

}

In this above program the inner printf is first called which prints three times the value of a, with space between each value namely 10 10 10. So 5 characters namely 3 value of a namely 10 and 2 spaces which totals to 5 characters gets printed.
So as explained before the inner printf after printing the values returns the number of characters printed namely 5 which is printed by the outer printf .
The output of the above program is
10 10 10 5
So it is always that function returns a value and so is printf which returns the number of characters successfully printed.