Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!husc6!hao!gatech!purdue!i.cc.purdue.edu!j.cc.purdue.edu!pur-ee!iuvax!bsu-cs!dhesi
From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: exit(-1)
Keywords: exit, zero
Message-ID: <1843@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: 14 Jan 88 06:35:28 GMT
References: <502@cresswell.quintus.UUCP> <6935@brl-smoke.ARPA> <1179@wjvax.UUCP> <6983@brl-smoke.ARPA> <7208@ki4pv.uucp> <23160@cca.CCA.COM>
Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 15

In article <23160@cca.CCA.COM> g-rh@CCA.CCA.COM.UUCP (Richard Harter) writes:
>In this case, 0 is a magic number -- it is a coded value and the wise
>(read those who learned by being burnt) use symbolic names which are
>defined in one place only.

But zero is not a magic number, else we'd all have to stop assuming
that the range of unsigned values begins at 0 (have to use UNSIGNED_MIN
instead), or assume that array indices start at 0 (have to begin arrays
at ARAY_MIN), or assume that NULL is zero (could be 17 on some
machines), or assume that all static variables are initialized to zero
(ought to be INIT_DEFAULT, an implementation-defined constant), or
assume that division by zero is illegal (division by ILL_DIVISOR, an
implementation-defined constant, is illegal instead), etc.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesi