Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!unido!mikros!mwtech!martin
From: martin@mwtech.UUCP (Martin Weitzel)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: return in main is *not* equivalent to exit() (was Re: main() arguments)
Message-ID: <833@mwtech.UUCP>
Date: 4 Jul 90 14:33:15 GMT
References: <78627@srcsip.UUCP> <78633@srcsip.UUCP> <25247@mimsy.umd.edu> <4238@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov>
Reply-To: martin@mwtech.UUCP (Martin Weitzel)
Organization: MIKROS Systemware, Darmstadt/W-Germany
Lines: 29

In article <4238@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> kaleb@mars.UUCP (Kaleb Keithley) writes:
>
>Furthermore, on p. 164 (Ibid.) [K&R2] it is stated:
>
>Within main, return expr is equivalent to exit(expr).  exit has the
>advantage...

K&R2 is right?

Nearly right! I'll never forget the day when I tracked down what
seemed to be a really wierd problem in some printer driving code
to the following (still buggy!) program:

	#include <stdio.h>
	int main(argc, argv)
		int argc; char **argv; /* OK so, Chris? :-) */
	{
		char buffer[BUFSIZ];
		setbuf(stdout, buffer);
		........ /* some code which produced output */
		return 0;
	}

Note that the bug could be eliminated by replacing `return 0;'
with `exit (0);'. Well, after that the cause for this problem
became obvious to me ... of course, all of you readers out there
in net-world allready know what the problem is, don't you :-)
-- 
Martin Weitzel, email: martin@mwtech.UUCP, voice: 49-(0)6151-6 56 83