Strange lint mumblings

[Gregg Siegfried]

In article <416 at marob.MASA.COM> daveh at marob.masa.com (Dave Hammond) writes:
>Can anyone explain why the statement:
>    exit(0);	/* followed immediately by main's closing brace */
>causes lint to complain:
>(137)  warning: main() returns random value to invocation environment

Exit is not part of the C language and appears to lint (and the compiler)
as just another function call.  That it happens to free resources, close
files, and run down the process is just a handy coincidence. ;-)

To nuke this message, use return rather than exit.  In most Unix environments,
an implicit exit is linked in with crt0 anyway.

>Dave Hammond

Gregg Siegfried
grs at alobar.att.com