You report an error and exit cleanly with a proper operating system error code. Crashing is a quick hack, acceptable for throwaway projects but not in software used long-term.
You seem to be using "crash" to mean "exit early". I am using "crash" in the sense of "this program did something causing the OS to terminate it externally". I suppose that's a real point of difficulty in communication across different programming languages.
We agree that the program should exit early. I think we agree it should do it cleanly and intentionally. I'm adding the constraint that "crash" doesn't necessarily mean "cleanly and intentionally", especially when talking about a C program.
You report an error and exit cleanly with a proper operating system error code. Crashing is a quick hack, acceptable for throwaway projects but not in software used long-term.
Crashing (in the sense of "give up and exit with an error") on invalid inputs is valid (and often the best thing) in many cases.
Fix your inputs.
You seem to be using "crash" to mean "exit early". I am using "crash" in the sense of "this program did something causing the OS to terminate it externally". I suppose that's a real point of difficulty in communication across different programming languages.
We agree that the program should exit early. I think we agree it should do it cleanly and intentionally. I'm adding the constraint that "crash" doesn't necessarily mean "cleanly and intentionally", especially when talking about a C program.