Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!chinet!john
From: john@chinet.UUCP (John Mundt)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: exit(-1)
Message-ID: <2089@chinet.UUCP>
Date: 10 Jan 88 02:36:57 GMT
References: <502@cresswell.quintus.UUCP> <6935@brl-smoke.ARPA> <1179@wjvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: john@chinet.UUCP (John Mundt)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 22

In article <1179@wjvax.UUCP> brett@wjvax.UUCP (Brett Galloway) writes:

>It appears to me that requiring EXIT_FAILURE and EXIT_SUCCESS is a
>sop to VMS's non-traditional usage.  Now I grant that it is a nice idea to
>define EXIT_FAILURE and EXIT_SUCCESS.  I also grant that other exit values
>are implementation-defined.  However, it is hard to conceive an implementation
>which has multiple exit-success values.  In this context, 0 is by far the
>most intuitive choice for EXIT_SUCCESS.

Using a non-zero exit value for a programs that exec()s a series of
sub-programs allows the sub-program to return the user's intentions
back to the execing program.  We use it in a menu-driven bbs program
where 0 is the plain-vanilla exit value with no special action
intended while other values call up various menus or denote a
particular program error.


John Mundt,				....ihnp4!chinet!teachad!fred
Teachers' Aide, Inc.
----------------------------

My opinions reflect the thinking of the company.  I *own* it!