FATAL_EXIT_CODE - why 33?

[Michael Meissner]

On Thu, Mar 01, 2001 at 08:37:27PM -0800, Zack Weinberg wrote:
> Does anyone know why the usual definition of FATAL_EXIT_CODE by
> xm-foo.h is 33?  I am considering having it default to EXIT_FAILURE
> (C89 required macro in <stdlib.h>) which is usually 1 on unix family OSes.

I believe there used to be a convention for the exit status amongst early BSD
programs (see /usr/include/sysexits.h), but the earliest version I can find (on
a SunOS 4 system internally at Red Hat) started the exit codes at 64.  Maybe an
earlier version started at 32?  Looking at old ChangeLogs, I see:

Tue May 16 18:04:47 1995  Richard Kenner  (kenner@@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu)

        * toplev.c (pfatal_with_name, fatal_io_error, vfatal):
        Use FATAL_EXIT_CODE instead of magic number.
        * cccp.c, cpplib.c, cpplib.h: Use FATAL_EXIT_CODE instead
        of FAILURE_EXIT_CODE.
        * fix-header.c, gen-protos.c: Likewise.
        * cpperror.c, cppmain.c: Likewise.
        Include config.h #ifndef EMACS.
        * xm-alpha.h, xm-rs6000.h, xm-vms.h (FAILURE_EXIT_CODE): Remove.

Looking at the Cygnus cvs files, I see before this change, it used to be 34 and
35 using hard coded integers.

-- 
Michael Meissner, Red Hat, Inc.  (GCC group)
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