Message-Id: <3.0.16.19971029005208.1b97170c@hem1.passagen.se>
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 1997 01:01:26 -0500
To: kagel AT ns1 DOT bloomberg DOT com
From: Peter Palotas <blizzar AT hem1 DOT passagen DOT se>
Subject: Re: Reading the command line
Cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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At 11.15 1997-10-28 -0500, you wrote:
>On Fri, 24 Oct 1997, Jon Seanor wrote:
>
>> >And the return type of main is int, not void. That should be in any text
>> >book too.
>> 
>> 
>> Only if you want to return something!
>
>WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!
>
>Function main() MUST ALWAYS RETURN INT and MUST ALWAYS END WITH A RETURN 
>statement!  The startup code will be returning the value at the top of the
>stack whether you like it or not, this is required by C convention, the C
>standard, and most modern operating systems.  If you do not want to return
>anything useful return zero(0), but you must return something or the OS
>status code (ERRORLEVEL in DOS) for the task will be garbage.

Howcome this is such a debated issue?  Let the people who doesn't want to
return anything do so if that makes them happy.  A program will compile
anyway, even if main isn't declared to return an int, possibly with a
warning, but sometimes not even that (depending on what compiler you use).
Personally I always declare main to return an integer since this is the
right thing to do, but it isn't neccessary as far as I can see, if you
don't want to return anything from main().
-- Peter Palotas alias Blizzar -- blizzar AT hem1 DOT passagen DOT se --

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