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Some very good observations. Otherwise a few points, from the copy here (clearly a 1st ed): http://cs.upm.ro/_users/cursuri_on_line/Alte_documentatii/C%20Progr

Some very good observations. Otherwise a few points, from the copy here (clearly a 1st ed): http://cs.upm.ro/_users/cursuri_on_line/Alte_documentatii/C%20Programming%20Language.pdf http://cs.upm.ro/_users/cursuri_on_line/Alte_documentatii/C%... "void didn’t exist in the book (although it did exist at some point before C89; see here, section 2.1)" -> There are many occurrences of void in the document above. "It appears that stdio.h was the only header that existed" -> From the document above many other headers are available (string.h, math.h, etc.) "Note that return 0; was not necessary." (on the main function) -> return 0 is not necessary in Standard as well (even if the semantic of omitting it is different between C89 and C99).

zorpner 11y ago
(clearly a 1st ed) Heh. Don't believe everything you read, kid.
_kst_ 11y ago
My paper copy of K&R1 (1978) does not mention void, nor does it mention standard headers other than stdio.h. The linked document may be a later draft (and it's almost certainly a copyright violation). Prior to C99, reaching the closing "}" of main() caused the program to return an undefined status to the calling environment. In C99 and later (as in C++), reaching the closing "}" does an implicit "return 0;".
- dfox 11y ago
  I had some problems in believing that C99 says that main() implicitly returns 0, so for future reference: It says so in 5.1.2.2.3, even including wording concerning the closing "}" (which seems to me as slightly quirky way to describe what it is describing). As for stdio.h being only header: it makes sense, as headers like stdlib.h and string.h contain mostly function declarations, which you don't strictly need in K&R. Some of 80's UNIX C code examples in books I've seen don't include anything (and there are even some that declare things like FILE and errno directly without including it from anywhere).

zorpner 11y ago

(clearly a 1st ed) Heh. Don't believe everything you read, kid.

_kst_ 11y ago

My paper copy of K&R1 (1978) does not mention void, nor does it mention standard headers other than stdio.h. The linked document may be a later draft (and it's almost certainly a copyright violation). Prior to C99, reaching the closing "}" of main() caused the program to return an undefined status to the calling environment. In C99 and later (as in C++), reaching the closing "}" does an implicit "return 0;".

dfox 11y ago
I had some problems in believing that C99 says that main() implicitly returns 0, so for future reference: It says so in 5.1.2.2.3, even including wording concerning the closing "}" (which seems to me as slightly quirky way to describe what it is describing). As for stdio.h being only header: it makes sense, as headers like stdlib.h and string.h contain mostly function declarations, which you don't strictly need in K&R. Some of 80's UNIX C code examples in books I've seen don't include anything (and there are even some that declare things like FILE and errno directly without including it from anywhere).