Question

Im currently learning c++ from a book called ‘Ivor Hortons Beginning Visual c++ 2010’.

In all the examples i’ve attempted so far I’ve had to use getch() to hold open the command prompt, and sometimes remove the return 0 statement from the end of the main method.

Is this a vagary of windows 7 and will it cause problems further down the line? It’s no problem doing this at the moment but since this is not included in the book I was wondering if it might be something I’ve set up wrong.

Many Thanks 🙂

Answer 1

getch() is not operating system specific, but it is not directly portable. The preferred method for doing this in C++ is to use std::cin.get();.

The main function can return 0 implicitly (you don’t need to actually have that code, see below).

int main()
{
   // valid, return 0 implied.
}

See this question for more details about the implicit return 0 from main.