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There are so many forms of main() function. Like int...

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Question by Sanjay
Submitted on 12/23/2003
Related FAQ: comp.lang.c Answers (Abridged) to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
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There are so many forms of main() function.
Like int main(), int main(int argc, char*argv[]), void main(). All of them work fine. My question is "is the main() function overloaded"? Or else how can we use the function with same name and different signatures?


Answer by naidu_trk
Submitted on 12/29/2003
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main is a special function and the c compiler takes care of it no matter how  u declare it .

 

Answer by gmcarthur
Submitted on 12/31/2003
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Technically speaking, main is defined to have a number of parameters.  The first is the number of arguments passed to it (int argc), the second an array of string with the arguments (char **argv or char *argv[], among other variations), the next (and last as far as I know) is the environment space (char *envp).

However, C compilers are set up to allow the programmer to have these parameters defined, or not.  I believe that the parameters are there at run time (in the run-time stack), but if you do not declare them in the prototype, you don't see them.

So, main is not overloaded.  The declaration just changes what values you can see from the caller to main.


 

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