[tor-dev] When to exit 0 on error

Zack Weinberg zackw at panix.com
Fri Jun 23 14:29:32 UTC 2017


On Fri, Jun 23, 2017 at 9:29 AM, Nick Mathewson <nickm at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 10:49 PM,  <f55jwk4f at vfemail.net> wrote:
>> I noticed tor sometimes exits 0 on error
>> [...]
>> When to exit 0 on error?
>
> When the error is unrecoverable, and continuing would be worse then exiting.

I don't think the question was "when is it appropriate to _exit_ on
error?"  I think it was "when is it appropriate to exit _0_ (i.e.
apparently successfully) on error?"

My expectation would be that exit(0) on fatal error is presumptively a
minor bug, it should be exit(1), and if there is some compelling
reason to exit successfully in a particular error case, there ought to
be a comment explaining that reason.

zw


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