exit(3) and sysexits(3) style policy

[Garrett Cooper]

On Apr 24, 2011, at 10:44 AM, Alexander Best <arundel at freebsd.org> wrote:

> hi there,
> 
> i was wondering about this for some time now:
> 
> various documents decribe different policies regarding exit(3)'s return values.
> style(9) e.g. recommends using exit(0), while other man pages such as err(3)
> recommend using the sysexits(3) return values.
> 
> i think i read some time ago on the mailinglists that it was decided that
> exit(3) should return integers rathers than sysexits(3) values. is this
> correct? shouldn't then all references such as in err(3) be removed and a
> note added to sysexits(3) that returnings its values via exit(3) does not
> according to current FreeBSD programming style?

Bruce Evans was very anti-sysexits a while ago, and I personally agree -- in part because they're not necessarily portable and their application isn't consistent.