Introduction to Computer Organization

11 Inside the main Function

As you know, every C program begins by executing a function named main, which is called from a startup function in the C runtime environment. The main function will call other functions (subfunctions) to do most of the processing. Even a simple “Hello, World!” program needs to call another function to write the message on the screen.

Most subfunctions need data to be passed to them as arguments from the calling function, and they often pass a result back to the calling function. Arguments to a function can be data or memory addresses. When the function is called, it performs its operations and then returns to ...