The C11 Standard declares that:
5.1.2.2.1 Program startup
The function called at program startup is named main. The implementation declares no prototype for this function. It shall be defined with a return type of
int
and with no parameters:int main(void) { /* ... */ }
or with two parameters (referred to here as
argc
andargv
, though any names may be used, as they are local to the function in which they are declared):int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { /* ... */ }
or equivalent; 10), or in some other implementation-defined manner.
10) Thus, int can be replaced by a
typedef
name defined asint
, or the type ofargv
can be written aschar ** argv
, and so on.
We will ignore this part: or in some other implementation-defined manner. since I'm interested only in definitions equivalent to the two above examples.
Would this be a valid definition for main since char* a[4]
and char**
are equivalent:
int main(int argc, char* argv[4]){/*...*/}
How about a VLA array, we are assuming printf
will return a positive int value:
int main(int argc, char* argv[printf("Hello there!")]){/*...*/}
Yes, this is all covered by the "or equivalent". The footnote about renaming parameters or using typedef
ed types are just examples.
My favorite variant is
int main(int argc, char* argv[argc+1]){/*...*/}
because it has the most information about the semantic of all main
functions.
int main(int argc, char* argv[4]){/*...*/}
is a valid signature of main
. Compiler will ignore 4
in char argv[4]
and it is equivalent to char argv[] = char **argv
. Same goes with second signature.