From: "Michael W. Ryder" <_mwryder@...>
Date: 2007-05-08T08:30:16+09:00
Subject: Re: rdoc on c and cpp files

John Joyce wrote:
> 
> 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...
> 

I know the free Borland C++ compiler accepts void main().  I always used 
it for utility programs where I didn't care for the return from the 
program.  My copy of K&R uses just main() for programs and the Borland 
compiler accepts it without any warnings.