Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!utstat!geoff
From: geoff@utstat.uucp (Geoff Collyer)
Subject: Re: silent status-16 problems in C News relaynews
Message-ID: <1989Aug6.065302.17699@utstat.uucp>
Organization: Statistics, U. of Toronto
References: <1989Aug6.032326.10455@utzoo.uucp> <1989Aug6.034125.10919@utzoo.uucp> <4518@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: Sun, 6 Aug 89 06:53:02 GMT

> Why are they "codes" at all?

Relaynews's exit status is a bit vector, each bit representing a
distinct kind of failure (RTFM: relaynews(8) DIAGNOSTICS).  Relaynews
could instead just exit with status 1 in the event of an error, but
supplying the bit vector is sometimes useful to people who work on
relaynews.  None of this really matters to most people, now that the
stdio flushing business has been fixed; you don't have to decipher the
exit status if you don't want to.
-- 
Geoff Collyer		utzoo!utstat!geoff, geoff@utstat.toronto.edu