fscanf return value

Question

What does fscanf return when it reads data in the file. For example,

int number1, number2, number3, number4, c;

c = fscanf (spFile, \"%d\", &number1);
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Answer 1

This happens to be a very straight forward question , and has been aptly answered by charles and ed before me. But they didnt mention where you should be looking for such things the next time you get stuck.

first the question -- the fscanf belongs to the family of formated input(scan) functions that are supposed to read a input and report some info on the data read like bytes or the count of items(variable addresses) that got a appropriate input read and had successfull assignment made.

here the fscanf is supposed to check for matches in the input file with the format string provided in the function call and accordingly assign the (in order of their position) variable - address with the value and once completed it will return the total count for the number of successfull assignments it made. hence the result of 1 and next was 4 (assuming input was provided properly).

second part: where to look ? -- well described details for such function are easily found in your manual pages or posix doc if you refer to one.

if you noticed , the previous two answers also contain small extracts from the man pages .

hope this helps.