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Use standard exit status code for usage errors #256

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merged 1 commit into from
Jun 30, 2024

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@hhromic hhromic commented Jun 29, 2024

The stdlib flag package (specifically ExitOnError) and most command line utilities use status code 2.
I tried to find proper sources for common exit status codes, however these are the best I could find:

From: https://stackoverflow.com/a/40484670

Exit status 0: success
Exit status 1: "failure", as defined by the program
Exit status 2: command line usage error

From: https://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/exitcodes.html:

2 | Misuse of shell builtins (according to Bash documentation)

More importantly, currently using -1 (which translates to 255) is actually documented as a bad choice in os.Exit:

For portability, the status code should be in the range [0, 125].

Fixes #246

* The stdlib `flags` package and most command line utilities use status code `2`.
@alexflint alexflint merged commit 177b844 into alexflint:master Jun 30, 2024
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@hhromic hhromic deleted the fix-246 branch June 30, 2024 14:43
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exit code should be 2 on flag parsing error
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