What is the purpose of returning a value from main () in C / C ++?

Question

Possible duplicates:
The main () function returns a value?
What should main () return to C / C ++?

What is the purpose of returning a value from main () in C and C ++?

How does the return value help us?

Is it possible to use the return value to achieve something important?

Answer 1

This is exit status . It is usually used to signal in the OS whether the process was successful or not in what it was doing.

Answer 2

Indicates the status of program execution. Usually zero means that it went fine.

Answer 3

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. , bash $? . , && || , , , :

# Fetch the images, and only process them if the fetch succeeded (return code 0).
fetch-images && process-images

Answer 4

In a command-line environment, a return value means success or failure in starting the program. This way you can share status information with the caller. Zero is reserved for success on Unix.

Answer 5

A more detailed answer can also be found here. More details