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Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2013 15:52:31 -0700
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Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.python:39719

On 02/23/2013 02:38 PM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 5:29 AM, Dennis Lee Bieber
> <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>         Error codes under DEC VAX/VMS used odd integers for
>> "success/information" and even integers for "warning/error" (been too
>> many years, I think positive integers were success/warning, negative
>> integers were information/error; I could also be wrong on which set were
>> even... if 0 were no-info/success then odd were errors and even were
>> success)).
> 
> Sounds like IBM DB2 and sqlca.sqlcode - 0 for success, <0 for error,
>> 0 for warning (or in some cases "status" - an SQLCODE of 100 means
> "end of result set", which isn't exactly an error but you can't fetch
> any more from it; it's akin to Python raising StopIteration to
> terminate a for loop).

All apps that return an error code to the operating system return 0 for
success, any other value for error.  All command-line utilities work
this way, all shells, etc.  Even Windows command-line apps work this way
(errorlevel is what they call it).