Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!oddjob!ncar!ames!decwrl!sun!gorodish!guy From: guy@gorodish.Sun.COM (Guy Harris) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: is there anything wrong with return(n) from main? Message-ID: <58690@sun.uucp> Date: 1 Jul 88 07:21:17 GMT References: <741@vsi.UUCP> Sender: news@sun.uucp Distribution: comp Lines: 16 > For some unknown reason, I have always felt uncomfortable > doing a return(n) from main: I used exit(n) instead. Can anybody > think of any possible reason why a return is not a good idea? Some implementations don't properly implement "return(n)" from "main". SunOS's C implementations did not do so from SunOS 2.0 to SunOS 3.5; they implement it correctly in 4.0. I seem to remember somebody claiming some other implementation did not do so. I think every S5 implementation from AT&T handled "return(n)" from "main" correctly, as did 4.[23]BSD; this does not, of course, guarantee that any particular implementation derived from either or both of those will do so correctly. ANSI C mandates it, so everybody's going to have to get with the program eventually.