22.6.1 Returning Values from main

When main returns, the process terminates. Whatever value main returns becomes the exit status which is reported to the parent process. While nominally the return value is of type int, in fact the exit status gets truncated to eight bits; if main returns the value 256, the exit status is 0.

Normally, programs return only one of two values: 0 for success, and 1 for failure. For maximum portability, use the macro values EXIT_SUCCESS and EXIT_FAILURE defined in stdlib.h. Here’s an example:

#include <stdlib.h>  /* Defines EXIT_SUCCESS */
                     /* and EXIT_FAILURE. */

int
main (void)
{
  …
  if (foo)
    return EXIT_SUCCESS;
  else
    return EXIT_FAILURE;
}

Some types of programs maintain special conventions for various return values; for example, comparison programs including cmp and diff return 1 to indicate a mismatch, and 2 to indicate that the comparison couldn’t be performed.