Returning from a function thats declared with Noreturn or noreturn function specifier

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The function specifier _Noreturn was introduced in C11. The header <stdnoreturn.h> provides a macro noreturn which expands to _Noreturn. So using _Noreturn or noreturn from <stdnoreturn.h> is fine and equivalent.

A function that’s declared with _Noreturn (or noreturn) is not allowed to return to its caller. If such a function does return to its caller, the behavior is undefined.

In the following example, func() is declared with noreturn specifier but it returns to its caller.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdnoreturn.h>

noreturn void func(void);

void func(void)
{
    printf("In func()...\n");
} /* Undefined behavior as func() returns */

int main(void)
{
    func();
    return 0;
}

gcc and clang produce warnings for the above program:

$ gcc test.c
test.c: In function ‘func’:
test.c:9:1: warning: ‘noreturn’ function does return
 }
 ^
$ clang test.c
test.c:9:1: warning: function declared 'noreturn' should not return [-Winvalid-noreturn]
}
^

An example using noreturn that has well-defined behavior:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdnoreturn.h>

noreturn void my_exit(void);

/* calls exit() and doesn't return to its caller. */
void my_exit(void)
{
    printf("Exiting...\n");
    exit(0);
}

int main(void)
{
    my_exit();
    return 0;
}

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