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The Basics
Id: 26206
Status: resolved
Priority: 0/
Queue: Getopt-Euclid
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Owner: Nobody in particular
Requestors: Toby.Allsopp [...] navman.com
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Bug Information
Severity: (no value)
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History Show all quoted text
  Mon Apr 09 19:26:33 2007 Toby.Allsopp [...] navman.com - Ticket created
Subject: Should exit with non-zero status on errors
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 11:26:11 +1200
To: bug-getopt-euclid [...] rt.cpan.org
From: Toby Allsopp <Toby.Allsopp [...] navman.com>
If an error occurs when parsing the command line, e.g. an unknown option or a missing required one, the program should exit with a non-zero status so that the invoking process knows that something has gone wrong. It is traditional to use an exit status of 2 for this case. It is also traditional to use an exit status of 1 when only usage information has been displayed (e.g. in response to --help, --usage or --version) so that it is clear that no useful work has been done. See the DESCRIPTION section of Pod::Usage for corroboration.
  Wed Apr 11 00:46:25 2007 damian [...] conway.org - Correspondence added
Subject: Re: [rt.cpan.org #26206] Should exit with non-zero status on errors
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 14:46:02 +1000
To: bug-Getopt-Euclid [...] rt.cpan.org
From: Damian Conway <damian [...] conway.org>
Toby Allsopp via RT wrote: Show quoted text
> If an error occurs when parsing the command line, e.g. an unknown > option or a missing required one, the program should exit with a > non-zero status so that the invoking process knows that something has > gone wrong. It is traditional to use an exit status of 2 for this > case.
Fixed in the next release. Thanks! Show quoted text
> It is also traditional to use an exit status of 1 when only usage > information has been displayed (e.g. in response to --help, --usage or > --version) so that it is clear that no useful work has been done.
Hmmmm. I'm not certain how widespread that tradition actually is. A quick survey of some common Unix utilities shows that most of them (under Darwin BSD at least) exit with zero when explicitly asked for usage info. Besides, I'm not sure it's logical to return a failure value when the app has successfully done exactly what was asked. Can you point me at any Unix reference that mentions this particular tradition? Damian
  Wed Apr 11 00:46:28 2007 The RT System itself - Status changed from 'new' to 'open'
  Wed Apr 11 15:24:08 2007 Toby.Allsopp [...] navman.com - Correspondence added
Subject: Re: [rt.cpan.org #26206] Should exit with non-zero status on errors
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 07:23:38 +1200
To: "bug-Getopt-Euclid\ [...] rt.cpan.org" <bug-Getopt-Euclid [...] rt.cpan.org>
From: Toby Allsopp <Toby.Allsopp [...] navman.com>
On 11 Apr 2007 at 16:46 NZST, bug-Getopt-Euclid@rt.cpan.org wrote: Show quoted text
> Toby Allsopp via RT wrote:
[...] Show quoted text
>> It is also traditional to use an exit status of 1 when only usage >> information has been displayed (e.g. in response to --help, --usage >> or --version) so that it is clear that no useful work has been >> done.
> > Hmmmm. I'm not certain how widespread that tradition actually is. A > quick survey of some common Unix utilities shows that most of them > (under Darwin BSD at least) exit with zero when explicitly asked for > usage info. Besides, I'm not sure it's logical to return a failure > value when the app has successfully done exactly what was asked. Can > you point me at any Unix reference that mentions this particular > tradition?
No, I can't and I agree that it doesn't seem very common. I'm quite happy for the exit status to remain zero when usage was requested. Thanks, Toby.
  Sun May 31 12:55:26 2009 kgalinsky [...] gmail.com - Correspondence added
Damian resolved this in version 0.2.0
  Sun May 31 12:55:30 2009 kgalinsky [...] gmail.com - Status changed from 'open' to 'resolved'