Re: exit(42)

[Jan-Benedict Glaw <jbglaw@lug-owl.de>]

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On Fri, 2004-09-24 12:57:59 +0100, Ankit Jain <ankitjain1580@yahoo.com>
wrote in message <20040924115759.6133.qmail@web52908.mail.yahoo.com>:
> well do any body know what does this mean?
> 
> exit(42)

It just leaves 42 (Illuminati!) back to the caller.

> and also when we say exit(0) or exit(1) then there is
> anyway to catch these values

Normally, you use a return value of zero to signal "Success!" and
anything else for "Something undesired happened."

> also when we return from main fn then what is the
> benfit?

exit() just here ends the program, possibly internally calling some
cleanup functions and the like. Return does only end a program IFF it
returns from the main() function.

> does it have any utilisation?

It does! Remember, exit() is "stop it here", while return is only "stop
it here, if I'm in main()."  See the difference? If, at some later time,
the whole program gets integrated into the codebase of a larger scale
program, where the former main() call just does one part of the work,
exit() from the old main() wouldn't be a nice thing:-)

MfG, JBG

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