Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!aplcen!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: main() linkage
Message-ID: <11621@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 17 Nov 89 15:34:40 GMT
References: <2387@stl.stc.co.uk> <744@lakart.UUCP> <0175@sheol.UUCP> <11592@smoke.BRL.MIL> <7733@cdis-1.uucp>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 18

In article <7733@cdis-1.uucp> tanner@cdis-1.uucp (Dr. T. Andrews) writes:
>It seems odd that X3J11 or its members would come up with such claims
>about main().  It would seem to fly in the face of years of established
>practice of using exit(condition) as a way to terminate programs.

You can also, as an alternative, invoke the exit() standard library
function to terminate the program.  exit(n) is the same as return n
from main().  This really has no bearing on proper function linkage.

>Declaring such programs non-portable does not seem to me to be a
>productive use of X3J11's time...

Yeah, we really felt like wasting our time so we did silly things
instead of working on the C standard.  Sheesh.

I already explained sufficiently why main() needs to be properly
declared in standard-conforming (i.e. maximally portable) programs.
Perhaps you should think about what I said instead of attacking it.