Should I return EXIT_SUCCESS or 0 from main()?

Question

It\'s a simple question, but I keep seeing conflicting answers: should the main routine of a C++ program return 0 or EXIT_SUCCESS?

Answer 1

EXIT_FAILURE, either in a return statement in main or as an argument to exit(), is the only portable way to indicate failure in a C or C++ program. exit(1) can actually signal successful termination on VMS, for example.

If you're going to be using EXIT_FAILURE when your program fails, then you might as well use EXIT_SUCCESS when it succeeds, just for the sake of symmetry.

On the other hand, if the program never signals failure, you can use either 0 or EXIT_SUCCESS. Both are guaranteed by the standard to signal successful completion. (It's barely possible that EXIT_SUCCESS could have a value other than 0, but it's equal to 0 on every implementation I've ever heard of.)

Using 0 has the minor advantage that you don't need #include <stdlib.h> in C, or #include <cstdlib> in C++ (if you're using a return statement rather than calling exit()) -- but for a program of any significant size you're going to be including stdlib directly or indirectly anyway.

For that matter, in C starting with the 1999 standard, and in all versions of C++, reaching the end of main() does an implicit return 0; anyway, so you might not need to use either 0 or EXIT_SUCCESS explicitly. (But at least in C, I consider an explicit return 0; to be better style.)

(Somebody asked about OpenVMS. I haven't used it in a long time, but as I recall odd status values generally denote success while even values denote failure. The C implementation maps 0 to 1, so that return 0; indicates successful termination. Other values are passed unchanged, so return 1; also indicates successful termination. EXIT_FAILURE would have a non-zero even value.)

Answer 2

Some compilers might create issues with this - on a Mac C++ compiler, EXIT_SUCCESS worked fine for me but on a Linux C++ complier I had to add cstdlib for it to know what EXIT_SUCCESS is. Other than that, they are one and the same.

Answer 3

0 is, by definition, a magic number. EXIT_SUCCESS is almost universally equal to 0, happily enough. So why not just return/exit 0?

exit(EXIT_SUCCESS); is abundantly clear in meaning.

exit(0); on the other hand, is counterintuitive in some ways. Someone not familiar with shell behavior might assume that 0 == false == bad, just like every other usage of 0 in C. But no - in this one special case, 0 == success == good. For most experienced devs, not going to be a problem. But why trip up the new guy for absolutely no reason?

tl;dr - if there's a defined constant for your magic number, there's almost never a reason not to used the constant in the first place. It's more searchable, often clearer, etc. and it doesn't cost you anything.

Answer 4

Once you start writing code that can return a myriad of exit statuses, you start #define'ing all of them. In this case EXIT_SUCCESS makes sense in context of not being a "magic number". This makes your code more readable because every other exit code will be EXIT_SOMETHING. If you simply write a program that will return when it's done, return 0 is valid, and probably even cleaner because it suggests that there's no sophisticated return code structure.

Answer 5

If you use EXIT_SUCCESS, your code will be more portable.

http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/topic/57495-return-0-vs-return-exit-success/

Answer 6

It does not matter. Both are the same.

C++ Standard Quotes:

If the value of status is zero or EXIT_SUCCESS, an implementation-defined form of the status successful termination is returned.