exit codes

[Przemyslaw Brojewski]

On Sat, Aug 02, 2003 at 10:52:37AM -0400, Greg Louis wrote:
> On 20030802 (Sat) at 1024:30 -0400, Clint Adams wrote:
> > > How about adding another switch to bogofilter that makes it return an
> > > exit code that's equal to its spamicity value?  IE a 1.00 count would
> > > return a 100, a non-spam of 0.04 would return a 4.
> > 
> > It boggles my mind that people are using exit codes at all for what is
> > clearly program output.
> > 
> One objective of bogofilter is to scale well.  Parsing ASCII output
> takes a good bit more time than checking return codes.

If my voice counts...

With the amount of ASCII parsing that bogofilter performs by itself
this effect may not be mesureable.

If adding another exit code breaks some scripts -- too bad for them.
But changing the meaning of existing exit codes is not necessarily
a good idea.

It is not possible to add new features to a program and maintain
various numbers, not only exit codes, in neat, ascending order
without any holes. Something will break. Your own testing scripts broke.


Przemyslaw Brojewski.