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

From Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>
Newsgroups comp.lang.misc
Subject Re: Algol 68 / Genie - scripting language and exit status codes
Date 2026-01-05 00:19 +0000
Organization A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID <10jf035$2e9ua$2@dont-email.me> (permalink)
References <10j5pfo$23rl8$1@dont-email.me> <10jc4h9$1if4q$1@dont-email.me> <10jcd25$23rl8$2@dont-email.me> <10jeupn$1ujaa$1@dont-email.me>

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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.

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Thread

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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