From: degger@xxxxxxx Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 02:01:22 +0100 (CET) On 4 Dec, Sven Neumann wrote: > Using them for error reporting is definitely a bad idea. Using a > negative value to indicate that a value has not been set and needs to > be computed is IMO a reasonable usage. On a side note: I found it quite often that the return value is set to something in case it's real value couldn't be computed, this is also some form of error indication which I'd like to avoid: A function fails or succeeds and in either case appropriate steps have to be taken; just propagating the error code down to the original caller in the hope to catch it there is IMHO a bad idea. Why? If a function is explicitly documented as returning an error, it's the caller's responsibility to handle it. The callee often doesn't know the high level context to handle it in a useful fashion. -- Robert Krawitz <rlk@xxxxxxxxxxxx> http://www.tiac.net/users/rlk/ Tall Clubs International -- http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2 Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lpf@xxxxxxxxxxxx Project lead for Gimp Print/stp -- http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton
