Why the return type is void* ,why not int because the function square is returning result which is of int type ?

Question

#include <stdio.h>

void * square (const void *num);

int main() {
int x, sq_int;
x = 6;
sq_int = square(&x);
printf("%d squared is %d\n", x, sq_int);

return 0;
}

void* square (const void *num) {
static int result;

result = (*(int *)num) * (*(int *)num);
return(result);
}

Answer 1

It works fine with void* too but what I wanted to know is that the function is returning the result which is of type int then why should the return type be pointer in the above case .

Answer 2

#include <stdio.h>

int * square (const int *num);

int main() {
int x, sq_int;
x = 6;
sq_int = square(&x);
printf("%d squared is %d\n", x, sq_int);

return 0;
}

int* square (const int *num) {
static int result;

result = (*(int *)num) * (*(int *)num);
return(result);
}

Answer 3

I replaced all voids with int and now its working

Answer 4

I'm actually not into C but I worked with Java some time ago and I'd say that its because the argumend gets defined as void so he works with void in the code and returns void

Answer 5

But I'm not shure