exit

Assume I'm starting a std::thread and then detach() it, so the thread continues executing even though the std::thread that once represented it, goes out of scope. Assume further that the program does not have a reliable protocol for joining the detached thread 1 , so the detached thread still runs when main() exits. I cannot find anything in the standard (more precisely, in the N3797 C++14 draft), which describes what should happen, neither 1.10 nor 30.3 contain pertinent wording. 1 Another, probably equivalent, question is: "can a detached thread ever be joined again", because whatever

Should I use exit() or just return statements in main() ? Personally I favor the return statements because I feel it's like reading any other function and the flow control when I'm reading the code is smooth (in my opinion). And even if I want to refactor the main() function, having return seems like a better choice than exit() . Does exit() do anything special that return doesn't? Actually, there is a difference, but it's subtle. It has more implications for C++, but the differences are important. When I call return in main() , destructors will be called for my locally scoped objects. If I