C++ - Restarting a game by calling the main() function

Question

I'm building a small game. One of the input options is to restart the game. The only way I could think of doing this was to call the main function from within the main function

int main(int argc, char argv[]) {
 ...
 if (input == "restart") {
  main(argc, argv);
 }

Is this bad form? Will it even work?

Answer 1

You can't call main() recursively. That's actually undefined behavior.

Use a loop instead:

int main() {
     bool restart = false;
     do {
         // Do stuff ...

         // Set restart according some condition inside of the loop
         if(condition == true) {
             restart = true;
         } // (or simplyfied restart = condtion;)
     } while(restart);
}