What happens if printf is not handled

I'm current supporting some legacy software written aeon ago, compiled in gcc 2.95.3. The program is ran in an SBC, occasionally I had to telnet into it to fix things. I notice that when the SBC is running on its own, it display some unexpected behavior e.g. missed executions.

When I do telnet in, slay the process and execute it manually, it stays fine that way. I'm suspecting that this has to do with per开发者_如何学JAVAforming printf without a proper terminal/console for it to print on.

If printf are not handled, what would be the effect of it?

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Could it be that the system is trying to print to a hardware serial port (which are really slow) and when you telnet in its replaced by a TCP port instead?

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It depends on the stdio library you use, most will attempt to write to console anyway, so...

You should redirecting your STDOUT and STDERR to NULL or to a file, this should be quiet easy. gcc 2.95 was very stable so we can pretty much rule out any problems there.