Fast code and no morals

[Chris Torek]

In article <1015 at brl-smoke.ARPA> lars at acc.arpa writes:

>> If VMS does not support exit(0) as successful termination,
>> then VMS is WRONG and needs to fix their exit() routine.
>>           Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn at BRL.ARPA>

>The common semantics seem to me to be "return to the surrounding
>operating system level, using the argument value as the return code".

This is arguably valid; but I argue that a better definition is
`quit this program; argument == 0 implies success, anything else
implies failure'.  This is *not* part of the `K&R bible'; it simply
is a good idea given the large existing body of Unix C code that
makes that assumption.

>Does the ANSI draft specify semantics for system calls ?

No, but it does specify semantics for exit().  Who ever said exit()
was a system call?  (And in fact, it is not a system call in any
`current' Unix: it is a stdio routine.  The system call is _exit().)
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 1415)
UUCP:	seismo!umcp-cs!chris
CSNet:	chris at umcp-cs		ARPA:	chris at mimsy.umd.edu