Zeev Suraski writes:
At 15:15 19/12/2001, Lars Torben Wilson wrote:
Zeev Suraski writes:
exit_with_status(), silent_exit(), quiet_exit(), etc. etc. Something
should fit :)
Yeah, you could do that. But then, why don't we have a
'c_compatible_dirname()' now, instead of a proper dirname() patch
which has been proven to break BC? Because the new version is Correct--at
least according to programming tradition. (Sorry, Manuel.) A function
named exit(), which accepts an argument, is just _expected_ to set the
exit status (assuming the coder has coded in other languages before).
A better solution IMHO would be to make exit() do the right thing and
create a new function named something like 'exit_print()' which
behaves the way the current exit() does.
Besides, as Vlad pointed out it's a _hell_ of a lot easier to do
the print-out thing in userland than it is to set the exit status. :)
It's not about whether or not it's easy or not - we're not at the stage of
designing the language behavior from scratch now...
There's a fundamental difference between dirname(), which is supposed to
answer the question of 'what directory does this file sit in?' - and
there's only one correct answer. The old dirname() had a bug, period.
What a function named exit() does is entirely up to us. Of course, it's
expected to terminate execution by its very name, but it may do other
things too, such as set the OS error code, print out an error message, etc.
Perhaps I have not explained my position. I don't care whether it
outputs the exit status as a string--as long as it sets the error code
appropriately *as well*.