Re: Compilation problems??

In comp.unix.aix Alicia Carla Longstreet <carla_at_ici.net> wrote:

> 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.

Yes, one point for you.

However, if you were remotely competant, and didn't have some underlying need to manifest your ability to be an individual, and instead thought, "Shit, there are users out there who are never going to read my manual, if I write one in the first place, so I know, I'll throw a "#include <errno>" in the top of my code, so THEN I can say "exit( EPERM)", and not only will it work, and compile on all platforms that have errno in /usr/include, but it will be available to the competant Analyst to figure out what the exit status was without wondering what whim you were in when you wrote that part of the code...

> 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.
And you have that right, no-one's trying to steal from you the ability to write poor code.

-- 

Simon Travaglia,  Email without auto spam rejection at spt_at_waikato.ac.nz
http://mrjolly.cc.waikato.ac.nz Ph: +64 7 838-4709 Fax: +64 7 838-4066
  University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton, New Zealand..