Sender: crough45 AT amc DOT de
Message-Id: <97Jul7.170831gmt+0100.16651@internet01.amc.de>
Date: Mon, 7 Jul 1997 16:12:39 +0100
From: Chris Croughton <crough45 AT amc DOT de>
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To: fighteer AT cs DOT com
Cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: void main ? 
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John M. Aldrich wrote:

> Embedded software is a special case of C/C++ and 
> may not have any applicability to the general 
> standard.  How many times have you written a 
> program to run a mobile phone?

As it happens, that's exactly the software I've been
working on for the last 4+ years, for 4 different
projects.  In fact, almost all of my professional
experience in the last 18 years has been on embedded
software.  The exceptions have been auxilliary programs
to do with the development process, like parsers,
text formatting, code generators, for MSDOS, VMS and 
UNIX, which haven't been the end product but means to
achieve it.

For that matter, when it comes to Windows programs you
can forget the result code as well, because the startup
and exit interface is very different.

In my experience, only a few programs ever need to 
bother with the exit code, and most of the time you know
you need to set it (programs designed to be run from make,
for example).  The vast majority of my programs end in
either return 0 or exit(0) if they exit at all.

Chris