Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ginosko!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!agate!apple!bridge2!csi!nsc!pyramid!leadsv!laic!nova!darin From: darin@nova.laic.uucp (Darin Johnson) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: want to know Message-ID: <664@laic.UUCP> Date: 10 Aug 89 23:32:58 GMT References: <8487@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> <2980@solo9.cs.vu.nl> <182@sunquest.UUCP> Sender: news@laic.UUCP Reply-To: darin@nova.UUCP (Darin Johnson) Organization: Lockheed AI Center, Menlo Park Lines: 20 In article <2980@solo9.cs.vu.nl>, roemer@cs.vu.nl (Roemer Lievaart) writes: > > Hi, everybody, > > I'm also a University's student in need of help. I always see that people > define the function 'main' in C-programs. Why is that? What should it return? > Can't I use another name? It is a UNIX-ism. The UNIX linker uses that function name as the name of the first routine to jump to (although many UNIX version may have ways around this). Other operating systems and linkers do things differently (first function found, special symbol in the object file, specified on command line, etc.). However, most C compilers use main() as the default (with a way out if you need to), since that is what K&R uses. Also, for you confusion, most UNIX kernels do not start at main() or even have a main()... Darin Johnson (leadsv!laic!darin@pyramid.pyramid.com) We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.