Why do you have to pass scanf the address of the variable to write in?

As I was learning C the first time, I remember I was asking this myself... I would have preferred it to return the scanned values, something like:

myVar = scanf("%s") /* don't do this :) */

but of course, in this case (1) you could assign only 1 variable, (2) you would have not had the return value (number of read items)...

Here is some discussion of it: ...