Re: [Bug-gnulib] feature request: argp()

[James Youngman]

On Tue, Jun 10, 2003 at 07:26:05PM +0200, Simon Josefsson wrote:
> Simon Josefsson <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > I also add a new module "sysexits", modeled after "exit", based on
> > libc's sysexits.h that argp need.
> 
> I forgot the MODULES.html.sh patch, but I'm having some trouble
> figuring out the standard status of it.  I doubt it is part of
> ANSI/ISO C, but may be part of POSIX:2001.  How can I find out?  The
> libc manual barely mention sysexits.h at all.

You could check the online version of the POSIX standard, which by the
way was updated - the current version is for 2003 (though the text was
finalised in 2002).  This is available at
<http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/toc.htm>.


The answer, however, is that sysexits.h is included in neither the
POSIX standard nor the Open Group Base Standard, though it is a fairly
traditional Unix feature (I suspect it's BSD-ish).  The only exit
values that either of these two standards (which actually have the
same text anyway) define are EXIT_FAILURE and EXIT_SUCCESS, which of
course are inherited from the ISO C standard.  The POSIX spec exptends
ISO C by indicating that any value between 0000 and 0377 can be
returned (other return values are reduced to just the low-order bits).

So, sysexits.h is commonplace but not standard.