Re: a recursion bug

[Linda A. Walsh]

Steven W. Orr wrote:
> I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding between the difference of 
> an error code returned by a system call and the exit status of a 
> process. They're two completely different things.
----
        It's not a fundamental misunderstanding.  It's a fundamental belief
in using data bandwidth and not wasting it.  If 0=ok, as it does in bash and
with errno, and, it is the case (still is),  that errno's fit in 1 byte,
there's no reason not to return the exact failure mode from a util...

        That's not to say that many or most do -- some even return a status
of '0' on fatal errors (xfs_mkfile -- on running out of room returns a status 
0).

> Just for fun, look at the man page for grep. It is advertised to return 
> a 0, 1 or 2. The actual values of errno that might happen in the middle 
> are a separate problem.
----
        Like I said, it's a fundamental waste of bits.

        But -- if it encountered an error, should it issue a SEGV and coredump 
message,
or should it terminate the wayward script/function and return to the prompt?

	Hey you can do whatever, but if the linux kernel crashed on every resource 
strain, most people would consider that bad.