Mechanism for returning a string from C main() program

Question

I know that C program generally ends with return, where we return the status of the program. However, I want to return a string. The reason is that, I will be calling the C-executable from a shell script and printing the returned string. Is there any mechanism for the same ?

Answer 1

There is no such mechanism; the return code is expected to be a byte. If you want to output a string from your program then use something like printf() and command substitution in the shell script to capture it.