Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Why I won't use ANSI C
Message-ID: <7196@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: 29 Jan 88 19:18:06 GMT
References: <7170@brl-smoke.ARPA> <7183@brl-smoke.ARPA> <1962@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 13

In article <1962@bsu-cs.UUCP> dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
>I doubt very much, though, that you
>will find a high level of consensus in favor of ANSI's stand on the
>exit(zero/nonzero) issue outside of the ANSI committe itself.  It seems
>to be essentially VMS users versus everybody else.

Not necessarily.  There has always been a need for a well-defined
failure status code, or do we insist that all non-zero values indicate
failure?  (They don't on UNIX; it's the value modulo 256.)  Note that
Whitesmiths Ltd., purveyors of the first non-AT&T C compilers across
a broad range of target operating systems, defined similar macros long
ago.  VAX/VMS just happened to be the system with a vocal adherent on
the committee; but that doesn't mean that his request was bogus.