Why I won't use ANSI C

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <1962 at bsu-cs.UUCP> dhesi at bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
>I doubt very much, though, that you
>will find a high level of consensus in favor of ANSI's stand on the
>exit(zero/nonzero) issue outside of the ANSI committe itself.  It seems
>to be essentially VMS users versus everybody else.

Not necessarily.  There has always been a need for a well-defined
failure status code, or do we insist that all non-zero values indicate
failure?  (They don't on UNIX; it's the value modulo 256.)  Note that
Whitesmiths Ltd., purveyors of the first non-AT&T C compilers across
a broad range of target operating systems, defined similar macros long
ago.  VAX/VMS just happened to be the system with a vocal adherent on
the committee; but that doesn't mean that his request was bogus.