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From: James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Whaddaya think?
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2024 09:38:54 -0400
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On 6/17/24 03:16, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
> On 17.06.2024 08:20, Keith Thompson wrote:
>> Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> writes:
....
>> and
>> that's important to understand.  It's effectively called by the
>> environment, which means that your definition has to cooperate
>> with what the environment expects. 
> 
> I'm not sure whether my K&R copy addresses that at all. A quick
> view and I see only one instance where "main()" is mentioned at
> the beginning:   main() { printf("hello, world\n"); }
> No types here, and no environment aspects mentioned.

K&R C did not have function prototypes. main() declared with no
arguments indicates that main takes an unknown number of arguments, of
unspecified type - as such it's compatible with taking either two
arguments, or none. For backwards compatibility, you're still allowed to
declare functions K&R style, but it's been more than 3 decades since it
was a good idea to do so.

....
>>> If I want a defined exit status (which is what I usually
>>> want) I specify 'int main (...)' and provide an explicit
>>> return statement (or exit() call).
>>
>> Why would you ever not want a defined exit status, given that it's
>> easier to have one than not to have one? 
> 
> Aren't we agreeing here? (The only difference is that you are
> formulating in a negated form where I positively said the same.)

You implied, by saying "If I want a defined exit status", that there are
occasions where you don't want a defined exit status - and he's
questioning that. Things that are undefined are seldom useful. If the
exit status is undefined, it might be a failure status. In many
contexts, that would cause no problems, but there's also places where it
would.

....
> Well, to indicate that there's no status information or that
> it's irrelevant. E.g. as was the case in the test fragment I
> posted.

That's the problem - your "indication that there's no status
information" doesn't achieve the desired effect. Instead, it results in
an unspecified status being returned to the system. If might be a
successful status, or an unsuccessful status. On the systems I use,
scripts that execute programs will often abort if the program returns an
unsuccessful status code. If there's nothing that needs to be brought to
the system's attention, use "return 0;", not "void main()".