, <tech-userlevel@netbsd.org>
From: Greg A. Woods <woods@weird.com>
List: tech-kern
Date: 03/21/2001 22:49:35
[ On , March 21, 2001 at 19:16:37 (-0800), Chris G. Demetriou wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: a few minor cleanups to src/share/misc/style
>
> As with many things, if there's a good, strong reason to do otherwise,
> then it's reasonable. But for random failures of a program, there's
> no great reason to differentiate.
Some failures aren't "random". There are a few common classes of
errors, common enough that there are even de facto standards for exit
codes to represent them, the most common probably being usage errors
(with a corresponding exit value of 2).
Of course then there are sub-system programs, such as mail delivery
agents which are supposed to return common codes with meanings defined
in the BSD-standard <sysexits.h> header file (which unfortunately has
gone against the aforementioned de facto standard even though I'd dare
argue it came second).
It would seem to me to be a very good thing to try and continue to
"standardise" on using the manifests defined in <sysexits.h>.
--
Greg A. Woods
+1 416 218-0098 VE3TCP <gwoods@acm.org> <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>