Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mailrus!purdue!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Turbo C atexit function.
Message-ID: <10426@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 21 Jun 89 20:31:33 GMT
References: <166@enuxha.eas.asu.edu> <22420@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 14

In article <22420@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (RAMontante) writes:
>... Doug Gwyn's comment about main()'s return value can also
>be finessed by declaring it as
>	void main(void)
>[I don't know if this is legitimate, but it silences the warning messages.]

No, it's not legitimate.  The goal should not be to "silence warning
messages", but to produce a correct program.  main() returns an int
value which is reported as the program's termination status.  You can
also invoke the exit() function to report this status.  A normal
return from main() without a value (such as occurs when the closing }
of the main() function body is "executed") is erroneous, whether or
not the compiler happens to complain about it.  The start-up code that
invoked main() in the first place is expecting a return value.