CODEWITHSUNDEEP
creturn-value
surya dutt
surya dutt

Reputation: 13

What happens to return value when its type differs from the declared return type?

Why is my simple C program printing "hello world" and being compiled with no errors and is running fine when I gave a floating point number next to return statement? Shouldn't it be an error to do so?

Here is my code:

#include<stdio.h>
int main()
{
    printf("hello world");
    return 2.1;
}

Upvotes: 1

Views: 344

Answers (5)

eddawy
eddawy

Reputation: 11

This is normal as the value well be implicitly converted to your declared type. the compiler will not mind but you'll get unexpected results at the runtime in general and in this specific case the casting to (int).

Upvotes: 0

edmz
edmz

Reputation: 8494

For the same reason of 

int main(void)
{
    // ...
    int x = 2.1;

    // ...
   return x;
}

This is called implicit conversion.

Upvotes: 3

Pedro Isaaco
Pedro Isaaco

Reputation: 404

The return code will be casted automatically on return. The long version is

return (int) 2.1;

Upvotes: 1

Johann Horvat
Johann Horvat

Reputation: 1325

Your code will return an integer because the compiler will take care of casting the float into an integer.

Upvotes: 0

Barmar
Barmar

Reputation: 781751

When you return a different type from the declared type of the function, the value is automatically converted to the declared type. So it's equivalent to doing:

return (int) 2.1;

Upvotes: 3

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