Question

Consider this program

int main()
{
        float f = 11.22;
        double d = 44.55;
        int i,j;

        i = f;         //cast float to int
        j = d;         //cast double to int

        printf("i = %d, j = %d, f = %d, d = %d", i,j,f,d);
        //This prints the following:
        // i = 11, j = 44, f = -536870912, d = 1076261027

        return 0;
}

Can someone explain why the casting from double/float to int works correctly in the first case, and does not work when done in printf?
This program was compiled on gcc-4.1.2 on 32-bit linux machine.

---

EDIT:
Zach’s answer seems logical, i.e. use of format specifiers to figure out what to pop off the stack. However then consider this follow up question:

int main()
{

    char c = 'd';    // sizeof c is 1, however sizeof character literal
                     // 'd' is equal to sizeof(int) in ANSI C

    printf("lit = %c, lit = %d , c = %c, c = %d", 'd', 'd', c, c);
    //this prints: lit = d, lit = 100 , c = d, c = 100
    //how does printf here pop off the right number of bytes even when
    //the size represented by format specifiers doesn't actually match 
    //the size of the passed arguments(char(1 byte) & char_literal(4 bytes))    

 return 0;
}

How does this work?

Answer 1

The printf function uses the format specifiers to figure out what to pop off the stack. So when it sees %d, it pops off 4 bytes and interprets them as an int, which is wrong (the binary representation of (float)3.0 is not the same as (int)3).

You’ll need to either use the %f format specifiers or cast the arguments to int. If you’re using a new enough version of gcc, then turning on stronger warnings catches this sort of error:

$ gcc -Wall -Werror test.c
cc1: warnings being treated as errors
test.c: In function ‘main’:
test.c:10: error: implicit declaration of function ‘printf’
test.c:10: error: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function ‘printf’
test.c:10: error: format ‘%d’ expects type ‘int’, but argument 4 has type ‘double’
test.c:10: error: format ‘%d’ expects type ‘int’, but argument 5 has type ‘double’

Response to the edited part of the question:

C’s integer promotion rules say that all types smaller than int get promoted to int when passed as a vararg. So in your case, the 'd' is getting promoted to an int, then printf is popping off an int and casting to a char. The best reference I could find for this behavior was this blog entry.