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Re: Algol 68 / Genie - scripting language and exit status codes

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On 2026-01-05 01:19, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
> On Sun, 4 Jan 2026 23:57:43 +0000, Andy Walker wrote:
> 
>> (c) You probably /don't/ want your program simply to return the
>> status, even in an extended A68 or A68G, Firstly, because most
>> current programs terminate with some result that is not any sort of
>> status [not even zero], so they will all need to be re-written,
>> Secondly, because "interesting" status results come from /not/
>> simply running off the end of the program [eg interrupts, wrong
>> permissions, non-existent files, ...] which, by default, is likely
>> to cause your program to abort with an error. So a perhaps better
>> mechanism would be to add a library routine which can set the status
>> and can be used by either the programmer or A68G.
> 
> Even if you weren’t concerned with backward compatibility, I still
> wouldn’t want to do it C-style, where “main” is a procedure which is
> given the command-line strings as arguments and is expected to return
> the exit status. Much better to access these via library routines (or
> implicit globals). Makes it easier to write separate argument-parsing
> code, that kind of thing.

The "C" case is a bit different; while you can 'return' from the
main() function with an exit code you can also just exit() from
anywhere. What's *similar* is that the outmost Algol 68 block has
a similar "outstanding" role as the main() function in "C"; it's
also not surprising that there's such specific language components
to adapt to the environment, also in other languages.[*]

Re "command-line strings as arguments"; sadly there's no standard
and I don't think that it's supported to any ideal degree in Genie.

Janis

[*] There are, of course, also other languages that don't have such
a special case and handle that more symmetrically.

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Algol 68 / Genie - scripting language and exit status codes Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-01-01 13:31 +0100
  Re: Algol 68 / Genie - scripting language and exit status codes Andy Walker <anw@cuboid.co.uk> - 2026-01-03 22:17 +0000
    Re: Algol 68 / Genie - scripting language and exit status codes Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-01-04 01:42 +0100
      Re: Algol 68 / Genie - scripting language and exit status codes Andy Walker <anw@cuboid.co.uk> - 2026-01-04 23:57 +0000
        Re: Algol 68 / Genie - scripting language and exit status codes Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-01-05 00:19 +0000
          Re: Algol 68 / Genie - scripting language and exit status codes Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-01-05 02:21 +0100
        Re: Algol 68 / Genie - scripting language and exit status codes Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-01-05 02:07 +0100

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