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iOS

Posted by Surya Dutt
Surya Dutt
Courses Plus Student 2,875 Points

why main function in c language has an integer return type but not float or string return types?

return type of main function

1 Answer

Gabe Nadel
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STAFF
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Gabe Nadel
Treehouse Guest Teacher
Gabe Nadel
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Gabe Nadel
Treehouse Guest Teacher

The main function returns 0 (an int) because in general, a return of 0 would indicate that everything worked correctly, if some other number, like -2 or 14544 came back, we would know something went wrong. Yes, you could craft a string or float as a return type, but when you have option to use something simpler, like an int, that is a better option. Either returning 0 or NOT 0 is a very cut-and-dry way to know if it worked as expected.