🚀 go-pugleaf

On 18 Jan 1996, Shadow.King wrote:

> : > void main(int argc,char *argv[])
> :    ^-----------------------------This one too, but not too serious

> This isn't really a problem, it's usually just the error code that the 
> program returns to dos when it exits.
                     ^^^
  Most (all?) implementations of MS-DOS ignore the return codes from 
programs, but then MS-DOS puts a great deal of trust in the programmer 
not to blow the machine up.  By contrast DEC C for VMS, which manages memory 
very meticulously, refuses to compile void main() even without strict 
ANSI compliance set -- VMS _always_ wants to know whether the program 
completed without difficulty and that's all there is to it.  VMS tends to 
run on multi-user machines where error recovery (or hard crashes) could be 
rather costly.

> As far as I know it doesn't HAVE to 
> do this so just void main should be fine, I usually do the saem thing 
> with simple programs that don't need to set the error level on exit and 
> I've had no problems whatsoever with it. It is if the program is supposed 
> to return an error level though.

  In addition to the practical problems of not returning error codes, the 
ANSI C code defines main to return int.  Any C program that doesn't exhibits 
undefined behavior from the declaration of main() all the way to the end, 
as far as the C language is concerned.

/**James Robinson***********************            
  "If a fatal error occurs, the program should not be allowed to continue."
 -- Oracle Pro*C User's Guide         *************james-robinson@uiowa.edu**/