Re: [Groff] Re: tbl--Failure to Open File

[Jorgen Grahn]

On Sun Feb  8 17:50:06 2004, address@hidden wrote:
> From: "Jeff Conrad" <address@hidden>
> Subject: Re: tbl--Failure to Open File
> Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2004 16:40:25 -0800
> 
> > > > Werner--I noticed that tbl seems to return zero regardless of
> > > > whether it encounters problems, so we may need to find out why.
> > > 
> > > I'm not sure what you mean.  Looking into the code there is just a
> > > single call to `fatal'.  With other words, tbl can continue even
> > > if the input is bad -- it simply omits everything between .TS and
> > > .TE if it can't process the data.
> > 
> > If tbl can't open a file, it calls error() rather than fatal().  Is
> > this what is intended?  How can it continue if there are no data?
> 
> Good question.  What's the bevaviour of AT&T tbl?

Does this answer your question?

------------------------------
kairos:~> uname -a
SunOS kairos 5.8 Generic_108528-18 sun4u sparc SUNW,UltraAX-i2
kairos:~> which tbl
/usr/bin/tbl
kairos:~> tbl </dev/null; echo $?
0
kairos:~> tbl /dev/null ; echo $?
.ds f. /dev/null
0
kairos:~> tbl /foobar ; echo $?
.ds f. /foobar

/foobar: line 1: Can't open file
tbl quits
1
kairos:~>
------------------------------

-- 
  // Jörgen Grahn       "And then the design was ignored, and small children
\X/ <address@hidden>  with crayons were given the O'Reilly Perl books and
                         told to Create.  And lo, it was done."
                                                         -- Teo de H, in ASR