Article View: comp.std.c
Article #4951Re: EXIT_SUCCES != EXIT_FAILURE?
From: Bill McCarthy
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 1996 03:43
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 1996 03:43
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1428 bytes
In <tompa.827763954@news>, tompa@ida.liu.se (Thomas Padron-McCarthy) writes: >Hi! > >Many of the students in a C course I teach have started to use >EXIT_SUCCESS and EXIT_FAILURE as return values from functions >(other than main). > >I have never used EXIT_SUCCESS and EXIT_FAILURE for anything >else than as the return value from main, and as the argument to exit. > >I don't like this new practice, but questions of style are difficult. >So I wonder: Does the standard guarantee that EXIT_SUCCESS and >EXIT_FAILURE are different? > >I have looked in my old ANSI X3-159-1989, >but I guess I'm not smart enough to understand it... Not only are they not guaranteed to be different. EXIT_SUCCESS is not guaranteed to be zero, and EXIT_FAILURE is not guaranteed to be different from 0. They are implementation defined and should only be used as an argument to exit() or in a return from main(). They are defined 7.10.4.3 of the standard. Bill McCarthy actuary@nando.net Wendell, NC USA
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!castle.nando.net!news From: actuary@nando.net (Bill McCarthy) Newsgroups: comp.std.c Subject: Re: EXIT_SUCCES != EXIT_FAILURE? Date: 26 Mar 1996 03:43:21 GMT Organization: Nando.net Public Access Message-ID: <4j7p4p$4n8@castle.nando.net> References: <tompa.827763954@news> Reply-To: actuary@nando.net (Bill McCarthy) NNTP-Posting-Host: grail806.nando.net X-Newsreader: IBM NewsReader/2 v1.2