What are carriage return, linefeed, and form feed?

 \r is carriage return and moves the cursor back like if i will do-

printf("stackoverflow\rnine")
ninekoverflow

means it has shifted the cursor to the beginning of "stackoverflow" and overwrites the starting four characters since "nine" is four character long.

\n is new line character which changes the line and takes the cursor to the beginning of a new line like-

printf("stackoverflow\nnine")
stackoverflow
nine

\f is form feed, its use has become obsolete but it is used for giving indentation like

printf("stackoverflow\fnine")
stackoverflow
                       nine

Note: This example does NOT work in high level languages !