Subj : Re: Dartmouth BASIC to C
To   : comp.programming
From : Rob Thorpe
Date : Mon Aug 08 2005 09:03 am

Gerry Quinn wrote:
> In article <VT6Je.126397$5V4.13471@pd7tw3no>, JSmith@mail.net says...
> > Having nothing better to do on a Saturday morning, I was looking at
> > Kemeny & Kurtz's 1964 manual for BASIC:
> >
> > http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dartmouth/BASIC_Oct64.pdf
> >
> > Below is a C port of the first example program given in the manual. Can
> > it be improved while preserving, as much as possible, the structure of
> > the original BASIC program?
>
> >      if(D == 0.0)
> >      {
> >          printf("no unique solution\n");
> >          exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
> >      }
>
> This isn't a good use of exit().  The program hasn't failed, the data
> has.  Since the data error was detected, the program can congratulate
> itself on a successful run.
>
> (Technically the data is embedded in this program, but that is
> presumably something you will be changing over time.)
>
> So you should just print the above message and return normally.

I'd say it would be best to return different error codes for:
1 Program failure and
2 Failure of user provided data

Plus text error messages.

.