C语言中exit和return的区别

今天在看《TCP/IP网络编程》的第10章“基于多任务的并发服务器”时发现，作者在子进程中使用了return 0来结束，而我之前在网上找的tcp socket示例则是使用了exit(0)来结束。那么return和exit有什么区别吗？

在 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3463551/what-is-the-difference-between-exit-and-return 找到了几个我觉得看得懂的解释

Example with return:

#include <stdio.h>

void f(){
    printf("Executing f\n");
    return;
}

int main(){
    f();
    printf("Back from f\n");
}

If you execute this program it prints:

Executing f

Back from f

Another example for exit():

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

void f(){
    printf("Executing f\n");
    exit(0);
}

int main(){
    f();
    printf("Back from f\n");
}

If you execute this program it prints:

Executing f

I wrote two programs:

int main(){return 0;}

and

#include <stdlib.h>
int main(){exit(0)}

After executing gcc -S -O1. Here what I found watching at assembly (only important parts):

main:
    movl    $0, %eax    /* setting return value */
    ret                 /* return from main */

and

main:
    subq    $8, %rsp    /* reserving some space */
    movl    $0, %edi    /* setting return value */
    call    exit        /* calling exit function */
                        /* magic and machine specific wizardry after this call */

So my conclusion is: use return when you can, and exit() when you need.