Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 18:24:10 +0200
To: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
From: tony AT nt DOT tuwien DOT ac DOT at (Anton Helm)
Subject: exit()

I just had some troubles with exitcodes:

I left a program, called with a spawnlp() from a second program, with
exit(-2). The result was that spawnlp() returned 254.

Code:

int en;

if((en = spawnlp(...)) )
  {
  printf("Testing errorcodes: %d\n", en);
  /*  do error handling */

  }


From the docs:

void volatile exit(int exit_code);
and
int spawnlp(...)

That means both, the parameter of exit() and the return value of spawnlp()
are int.

I remember having read long time ago that DOS can only handle errorcodes
0...255.
(is that correct ?) Therefore it is not a DJGPP but a DOS problem.

I finally declared 

signed char en;

and got corrrect behavior for negative exitcodes. 

This is just a workaround. What is the correct procedure to deal with
exitcodes (in a portable way) ?


Tony


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