Exit code 252

[Dan Bernstein]

In article <4987 at goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> ok at goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
> In article <2538 at odin.cs.hw.ac.uk>, suthan at cs.hw.ac.uk (Manickam Umasuthan) writes:
> > Could someone explain to me what it means if a programs exits with
> > exit code 252 ? 
> It means whatever the author of the program wanted it to mean.
> If it's a UNIX or MS-DOS program, the program probably did exit(-4),
> so check the program documentation for -4 as well as 252.

On many UNIX boxes a main() that falls through the end will return a
garbage exit code. In systems shipped by careless vendors many programs
act this way. New users seem to notice this most often in Makefiles and
when a job exits in the background under csh; otherwise the exit code of
such programs generally isn't used.

---Dan