Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!rutgers!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!goudreau
From: goudreau@xyzzy.UUCP (Bob Goudreau)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: exit(-1), 0 is sometimes magic
Message-ID: <562@xyzzy.UUCP>
Date: 17 Jan 88 19:45:32 GMT
References: <502@cresswell.quintus.UUCP> <6935@brl-smoke.ARPA> <1179@wjvax.UUCP> <6983@brl-smoke.ARPA> <7208@ki4pv.uucp> <23160@cca.CCA.COM> <1843@bsu-cs.UUCP> <2305@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <1868@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: goudreau@dg-rtp.UUCP (Bob Goudreau)
Organization: Data General Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC
Lines: 20
Keywords: exit, zero, flaming

In article <1868@bsu-cs.UUCP> dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
>I gave a number of example attempting to show that zero is inherently
>a unique integer and therefore not a "magic number" in the usual
>sense of the term.
>....
>It seems to make perfect sense to me that in the non-VMS world in which
>a single successful termination value, and multiple failure termination
>values, are needed, zero should be the successful termination value.
>
>Therefore the use of exit(0) for successful termination is not
>arbitrary.  It is intuitively correct.

Gee that's swell, but it still doesn't address the issue of the
magic number.  You can stamp your feet and pout all you want at
"non-intuitive" operating systems, but your code still won't port
to them easily.  Doug Gwyn is still correct:  zero is definitely
a magic number when used as the successful termination value.
Your point about zero as the first index to an array is irrelevant:
such behavior is part of the specification of the C language.
Return statuses are OS-dependent, and are explicitly beyond the scope
of X3J11.