From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from kerhand.co.uk (_smtpd@82-69-137-214.dsl.in-addr.zen.co.uk [82.69.137.214]) by krisdoz.my.domain (8.14.3/8.14.3) with ESMTP id o6SDci9J026071 for ; Wed, 28 Jul 2010 09:38:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (1000@localhost [IPv6:::1]) by kerhand.co.uk (OpenSMTPD) with ESMTP id i926RcqE; Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:38:18 +0100 (BST) Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:38:18 +0100 From: Jason McIntyre To: Ruslan Ermilov Cc: discuss@mdocml.bsd.lv Subject: Re: mdoc EXIT STATUS (Was: pending open issues) Message-ID: <20100728133842.GB31150@bramka.kerhand.co.uk> References: <20100727092007.GA21455@bramka.kerhand.co.uk> <4C4EA7A0.1040104@bsd.lv> <20100727094102.GC21455@bramka.kerhand.co.uk> <4C4EAEE9.9000106@bsd.lv> <20100727101815.GD21455@bramka.kerhand.co.uk> <4C4EC13B.1000906@bsd.lv> <20100727131709.GA16499@edoofus.dev.vega.ru> <4C4EE52F.9020601@bsd.lv> <20100727141538.GA8226@bramka.kerhand.co.uk> <20100728123317.GA43609@edoofus.dev.vega.ru> X-Mailinglist: mdocml-discuss Reply-To: discuss@mdocml.bsd.lv Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20100728123317.GA43609@edoofus.dev.vega.ru> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.3i On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 04:33:17PM +0400, Ruslan Ermilov wrote: > > > > what exactly is the purpose of having two sections? how do you separate > > application diagnostics from their return codes? > > Well, exit statuses and diagnostic messages aren't necessarily related. > Like I said, the main reason for introducing the EXIT STATUS section > was to follow POSIX. DIAGNOSTICS was left untouched for documenting > diagnostic messages. POSIX uses STDERR for this purpose, let me quote > the relevant text: > > : The STDERR section describes the standard error output of > : the utility. Only those messages that are purposely sent by > : the utility are described. [snip] thanks, that's clarified some questions i had. i'll wait and see what netbsd people have to say too. i think though, that we probably won;t reinstate EXIT STATUS - it feels too silly having a section for what essentially amounts to a single sentence. > > > i'm struggling to find a page (sections 1, 6, or 8) where DIAGNOSTICS > > makes sense. i cannot even find any posix pages with it. or are you just > > using DIAGNOSTICS for section 4? > > See http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?route for one such > example. > yes, that seems to be one of the few 1/6/8 pages with a reasonable DIAGNOSTICS section. jmc -- To unsubscribe send an email to discuss+unsubscribe@mdocml.bsd.lv