Is this the only return value for strcmp() in C?

Question

I\'m learning C, and am currently studying String Handling. From where I\'m studying, strcmp() is defined as-

This is a function which c

Answer 1

Here is a simple implementation of strcmp() in C from libc from Apple:

int
strcmp(const char *s1, const char *s2)
{
    for ( ; *s1 == *s2; s1++, s2++)
        if (*s1 == '\0')
            return 0;
    return ((*(unsigned char *)s1 < *(unsigned char *)s2) ? -1 : +1);
}

FreeBSD's libc implementation:

int
strcmp(const char *s1, const char *s2)
{
    while (*s1 == *s2++)
        if (*s1++ == '\0')
            return (0);
    return (*(const unsigned char *)s1 - *(const unsigned char *)(s2 - 1));
}

Here is the implementation from GNU libc, which returns the difference between characters:

int
strcmp (p1, p2)
     const char *p1;
     const char *p2;
{
  const unsigned char *s1 = (const unsigned char *) p1;
  const unsigned char *s2 = (const unsigned char *) p2;
  unsigned char c1, c2;

  do
    {
      c1 = (unsigned char) *s1++;
      c2 = (unsigned char) *s2++;
      if (c1 == '\0')
    return c1 - c2;
    }
  while (c1 == c2);

  return c1 - c2;
}

That's why most comparisons that I've read are written in < 0, == 0 and > 0 if it does not need to know the exact difference between the characters in string.