From: John Joyce <dangerwillrobinsondanger@...>
Date: 2007-05-08T08:11:25+09:00
Subject: Re: rdoc on c and cpp files


On May 8, 2007, at 7:51 AM, Peter Seebach wrote:

> In message <923DE35C-CA19-4867-B3CE-FC3DB60A4393@gmail.com>, John  
> Joyce writes:
>> What PS is saying is, unless you're using a really old compiler and
>> system (really really old) ...
>> main is a function that always returns int. Not void. Though some
>> compilers are kind of forgiving and will change it internally to int
>> anyway, just use int.
>
> It's been "int" since the first C compilers.  There's some platforms
> that are more tolerant, but it's been that way since K&R1.
>
> -s
>
Perhaps it has. Doesn't matter since when. There are and were  
compilers that accept it. There are (unfortunately) and were books  
that taught void main for a long time.
I can only speculate that they did this to initially hide some  
details from people just starting out with C.
Luckily it doesn't happen anymore, but a lot of those old books are  
still floating around, not to mention old code...