Fast Morals & No Code

[COTTRELL, JAMES]

/*
> >  This isn't portable to VMS. ...Does anybody care about VMS, though?...

Not really.
 
> Yes I care about VMS.  While UNIX is a great OS, it is not the be all or 
> end all that many UNIX junkies think it is.  The documentation is crummy!

Which UNIX? BSD or System V? Which documentation? I suppose you *like*
reading all that RMS crap just to read files? I suppose you *like* all
that verbage in their reference manuals. I suppose you *like* `foreign'
programs that have to read their command line arguments in arcane ways.
I suppose you *like* the lack of I/O redirection & pipes. I once knew
how VMS works. Then I learned UNIX (V6, V7, 4.2 BSD). When I was once
again forced to deal with it again (to read & post mail) I found out
*that I can't relearn it*!!! The concepts are *alien* to me. VMesS sucks!
 
> As for 0 being an undefined status code, the "Programming in VAX 11-C" manual 
> (N.B. I have no experience about this) says that a status of 0 signifies a 
> warning. So it is defined!  Not conventionally, I grant you, but that 
> should pose no problem to the well organized programmer :-).
> 
> #ifdef  VMS
> #define WARNING 0       /* these can be kept in a local include file */
> #define SUCCESS 1
> #define ERROR   2
> #endif  /* VMS */
> 
> ...  error(SUCCESS); 
> 
> Glenn Sowell

The point is that the VMS C implementation must map its exit codes into
what the operating system expects. When the programmer says `exit 0', he
means `I succeeded'. The exit() function must support this.

	jim		cottrell at nbs
*/
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