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What question does the exit code answer? Are there any errors? No (0) there are no errors. The concept of using 0 to mean false is not new to javascript is wha

What question does the exit code answer? Are there any errors? No (0) there are no errors. The concept of using 0 to mean false is not new to javascript is what I was getting at.

kbart 9y ago
"Are there any errors? No (0) there are no errors." Not necessarily. It's just a (mostly POSIX and Linux kernel) convention to use 0 as "no error" result, but there are plenty of code that returns 0 as an error and >0 for success. It has nothing to do with C language itself, as C functions let you return pretty much anything or nothing at all (void functions).
joosters 9y ago
Again, it's not a yes/no flag. The question is rather 'what error happened?' - in which case, it makes eminent sense for 'no error' to be the first exit code, hence 0.
boomlinde 9y ago
The question it answers is "what was the exit status of the process", where zero typically means success, and non-zero means that there was some kind of error or exceptional exit condition. The most important difference from a boolean is that the exit status is often used to enumerate several kinds of exit conditions, some of which are defined in POSIX (sysexits.h). In a shell, for example, the 0 exit status is normally actually truthy: $(exit 0) && echo hello
- RandomInteger4 9y ago
  Pretty sure that we can all agree that bash is a complete unintuitive dumpster fire, so that doesn't count.
  - RandomInteger4 9y ago
    Granted, Lua doesn't consider 0 false either, but at least Lua isn't a dumpster fire. Let's just leave it at C languages + Python, which account for a large percentage of developer mind-share, so to say that it's unintuitive that 0 is falsey is either disingenuous or slightly ignorant.
  - boomlinde 9y ago
    The point is that the status code is an enumeration of several different values, neither of which are "true" or "false" and that whenever you want to derive some boolean meaning from it, you are going to have to decide which is true and what isn't because it's not an inherent property of the value. You say that it answers the question "Are there any errors?", but that's just one possible boolean interpretation of the status code. That said, I don't know of a shell that doesn't interpret zero status as true, because true(1) and false(1) in Unix returns status zero and non-zero respectively. It's not just Unix, it's Windows, DOS etc. In that sense, the prevalent boolean interpretation is that it answers the question "Did the process end with a success status code?", the exact opposite of what you think. That you or anyone else finds bash or this boolean interpretation in general unintuitive is besides the point, and ignoring that I've already said half of this to complain about bash is a pretty rude way to short-circuit a discussion.

What question does the exit code answer? Are there any errors? No (0) there are no errors. The concept of using 0 to mean false is not new to javascript is what I was getting at.

kbart 9y ago

"Are there any errors? No (0) there are no errors." Not necessarily. It's just a (mostly POSIX and Linux kernel) convention to use 0 as "no error" result, but there are plenty of code that returns 0 as an error and >0 for success. It has nothing to do with C language itself, as C functions let you return pretty much anything or nothing at all (void functions).

joosters 9y ago

Again, it's not a yes/no flag. The question is rather 'what error happened?' - in which case, it makes eminent sense for 'no error' to be the first exit code, hence 0.

boomlinde 9y ago

The question it answers is "what was the exit status of the process", where zero typically means success, and non-zero means that there was some kind of error or exceptional exit condition. The most important difference from a boolean is that the exit status is often used to enumerate several kinds of exit conditions, some of which are defined in POSIX (sysexits.h). In a shell, for example, the 0 exit status is normally actually truthy: $(exit 0) && echo hello

RandomInteger4 9y ago
Pretty sure that we can all agree that bash is a complete unintuitive dumpster fire, so that doesn't count.
- RandomInteger4 9y ago
  Granted, Lua doesn't consider 0 false either, but at least Lua isn't a dumpster fire. Let's just leave it at C languages + Python, which account for a large percentage of developer mind-share, so to say that it's unintuitive that 0 is falsey is either disingenuous or slightly ignorant.
- boomlinde 9y ago
  The point is that the status code is an enumeration of several different values, neither of which are "true" or "false" and that whenever you want to derive some boolean meaning from it, you are going to have to decide which is true and what isn't because it's not an inherent property of the value. You say that it answers the question "Are there any errors?", but that's just one possible boolean interpretation of the status code. That said, I don't know of a shell that doesn't interpret zero status as true, because true(1) and false(1) in Unix returns status zero and non-zero respectively. It's not just Unix, it's Windows, DOS etc. In that sense, the prevalent boolean interpretation is that it answers the question "Did the process end with a success status code?", the exact opposite of what you think. That you or anyone else finds bash or this boolean interpretation in general unintuitive is besides the point, and ignoring that I've already said half of this to complain about bash is a pretty rude way to short-circuit a discussion.