Re: [9fans] the declaration of main()

[dmr@plan9.bell-labs.com]

Forsyth said,

 > although it was possible to return a status from main by 6th edition
 > (in 5th edition returning from main did exit(0)), and only su included
 > return from main, arguably wrongly in 5th edition and definitely so in
 > 6th.  when i looked recently, i could find only two commands using it
 > in 7th edition (makekey and graph, both returning 0).

5th and 6th did behave as Charles says.  The real difference
between them and the 7th was that almost no use was
made of status returns, (either exit() or return value of main),
in the earlier ones.  Many things just flowed off
the end of main.  Between 6th and 7th, most things were
fixed, in part because Bourne installed a version of his
shell that announced every non-zero termination.
Also things like make arrived, and non-zero returns
began to be treated more often as errors.

	Dennis