Re: Compilation problems??

Chris Engebretson wrote:
>
> In article <33F359DD.4855_at_ici.net>, Alicia Carla Longstreet <carla_at_ici.net> writes:
>
> |> There is NOTHING in the standard that requires a program to return
> |> either EXIT_SUCCESS or EXIT_FAILURE, the Standard allows ANY INTEGER
> |> VALUE to be returned, with either exit() or a simple return.
>
> However a program which exits with a status other than 0, EXIT_SUCCESS,
> or EXIT_FAILURE is not a strictly-conforming C program. The behavior
> of exit statuses not mentioned above is implementation-defined, i.e,
> on one platform "exit(1);" might indicate success, on another it might
> indicate failure, and on yet another it might even indicate that the
> program "almost worked."

Which is patently absurd. When I write a program, I, not the standard, not you or anybody else, decide what the exit codes mean. Exit codes often specify what went wrong, or possibly, most any exit code is a code for sucess. The Standard defines three exit codes to be used when the programmer has no desire or need to provide exit codes of his/her own specification.

Exit codes are NEVER implementation defined, they are ALWAYS defined by the programmer and should be specified in the documentation.

If I write a program and decide that exit(99) indicates failure due to an inability to allocate sufficient memory for a data object, that is EXACTLY what an exit code of 99 will mean ON EVERY SINGLE PLATFORM/OS THAT I CHOOSE TO PORT MY PROGRAM TO.

-- 
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* Alicia Carla Longstreet     carla_at_ici.net             *
* Supporter of the campaign against grumpiness on c.l.c *
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*      Children,                                        *
*      We spend two years teaching them to talk...      *
*      and 20 years trying to get them to shut up!      *
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The money spent on an abortion,
as any woman may find out,
can better be spent on other things,
like taking the kids to an amusment park, or on vacation.