This is an unofficial snapshot of the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG21 Core Issues List revision 115d. See http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/ for the official list.

2024-10-26

1886. Language linkage for main()

[Moved to DR at the May, 2015 meeting.]

There does not appear to be any restriction on giving main() an explicit language linkage, but it should probably be either ill-formed or conditionally-supported.

Proposed resolution (November, 2014):

1. Change 6.9.3.1 [basic.start.main] paragraph 2 as follows:

An implementation shall not predefine the main function. This function shall not be overloaded. It Its type shall have C++ language linkage and it shall have a declared return type of type int, but otherwise its type is implementation-defined. An implementation shall allow both...

2. Change 6.9.3.1 [basic.start.main] paragraph 3 as follows:

The function main shall not be used within a program. The linkage (6.6 [basic.link]) of main is implementation-defined. A program that defines main as deleted or that declares main to be inline, static, or constexpr is ill-formed. The main function shall not be declared with a linkage-specification (9.11 [dcl.link]). A program that declares a variable main at global scope or that declares the name main with C language linkage (in any namespace) is ill-formed. The name main is not otherwise reserved...