If a name that has not been previously declared occurs in an expression and is followed by a left parenthesis, it is declared by context to be a function name, the function is assumed to return an int, and nothing is assumed about its arguments. Furthermore, if a function declaration does not include arguments, as in
double atof();
that too is taken to mean that nothing is to be assumed about the arguments of atof; all parameter checking is turned off. This special meaning of the empty argument list is intended to permit older C programs to compile with new compilers. But it’s a bad idea to use it with new programs. If the function takes arguments, declare them; if it takes no arguments, use void.引自 4.2 Functions Returning Non-integers