Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!cmcl2!beta!unm-la!unmvax!nmtsun!hydrovax
From: hydrovax@nmtsun.nmt.edu (M. Warner Losh)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: exit(-1), 0 is sometimes magic
Summary: OK, I wasd wrong
Keywords: exit, zero
Message-ID: <1251@nmtsun.nmt.edu>
Date: 23 Jan 88 19:05:15 GMT
References: <502@cresswell.quintus.UUCP> <6935@brl-smoke.ARPA> <1179@wjvax.UUCP> <7162@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Organization: NMT Hydrology program
Lines: 32

In article <7162@brl-smoke.ARPA>, gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) writes:
> In article <1234@nmtsun.nmt.edu> hydrovax@nmtsun.nmt.edu (I) write:
> >As a side note.  exit(0) in UNIX isn't quit correct.  The UNIX shell,
> >as far as I know, doesn't give a hill of beans wheather you say exit(0),
> >exit(1000), exit (magic_number)....
> 
> No, there are shell built-ins such as "test" that "know" that only a 0
> termination status indicates success.
> 

A knee jerk reaction at best.  Had I stopped to read the manuals.....

> The point that the exit status is interpreted by the execution environment,
> which is not necessarily synonymous with the "operating system", is correct.
> Saying that this is a "shell" is being too specific, however.  In fact,
> even on UNIX it's not necessarily a shell, just the parent process.

I know that picking nits like this can be irritating, but they should be
pointed out from time to time.  I just got a little carried away with
the generalism.  Programmers that complain about how this or that system
does X should realize what part of the system is resonsible for the X
behaviour.  Otherwise, we might say that UNIX (or VMS) has lots of bugs
in it, because some obscure utility core dumps (or produces a typical
VMS error SCREEN :-).  That utility is buggy, not the operating system
in which it lives.

-- 
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