On Sun, Aug 24, 2003 at 12:09:21PM +0200 it came to pass that Leopold Toetsch wrote: > Parrot programs have commandline info in P0 but there is no means to > communicate an exit-status to the shell. > We could do: > > 1) REG_INT(5) ...has exit code > 2) end Ix ... end opcode has exit code > 3) exit_code Ix .. set exit code > > 1) breaks existing programs but fits calling conventions > 2) could break tools, which assume C<end> is opcode #0 > so probably 3) or ... > > Comments welcome > leo
My EUR 0,02 is: - I think that we (parrot) are currently in a state that we should not be too concerned about backward compatibility and breaking existing programs. There will be an infinite amount of time when we will need to worry about it, so let's not start too soon. Whilst we (mostly: you :-) are developing parrot and have not declared anything "stable", let's go for the best solutions within the defined architecture... - Because of that, I like option 1). Adding a new "exit_code" op seems ugly to me. What would happen if I use "exit_code" halfway through the program? (I can imagine, but still it could make it hard to debug where in Jupiter's name the exit code has been set. If this is the way to go, I would be happier with a PMC type that abstracts the interpreter and use an "exit-code" attribute... - I like 2) too, since it matches the patterns in a lot of languages that can set the return code in the exit/return/end statement. ++Jos.nl -- La vida no es la que uno vivió, sino la que recuerda y cómo la recuerda para contarla... ~ Gabriel García Márquez
