What does "collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status" mean?

I see the error *collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status* very often. For example, I was trying to build the following snippet of code:

```lang-c
void main() {
char i;

printf("ENTER i");
scanf("%c", &i);

clrscr();

switch(i) {
default:
printf("\nHi..\n");
break;
case 1:
printf("\n\na");
break;
case 2:
printf("\nb\n");
break;
case 3:
printf("\nc");
break;
}
}
```

And I got this:

```lang-none
main.c:(.text+0x33): undefined reference to `clrscr'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
```

What does it mean?

In your situation you got a reference to the missing symbols. But in some situations, ld will not provide error information.

If you want to expand the information provided by ld, just add the following parameters to your $(LDFLAGS)

-Wl,-V

Include: `#include<stdlib.h>`

and use `System("cls")` instead of `clrscr()`

Just press Ctrl+S then do the execution part

`clrscr` is not standard C function. According to the Internet, it used to be a thing in old [C++Builder][1].

*https://stackoverflow.com/questions/930138/is-clrscr-a-function-in-c*


[1]:

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The `ld returned 1 exit status` error is the consequence of previous errors. In your example, there is an earlier error—`undefined reference to 'clrscr'`—and this is the real one. The exit status error just signals that the linking step in the build process encountered some errors. Normally, `exit status 0` means success, and `exit status` > 0 means errors.

When you build your program, multiple tools may be run as separate steps to create the final executable. In your case, one of those tools is [ld][1], which first reports the error it found (`clrscr` reference missing), and then it returns the exit status. Since the exit status is > 0, it means an error and is reported.

In many cases, tools return the number of errors they encountered as the exit status. So if the **ld** tool finds two errors, its exit status would be 2.

[1]:

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