Limit mhparam's exit status to 120 missing components.

Otherwise, 126 and 127 would clash with bash and zsh's use.
Higher than 127 would look like signals.  And 256 would wrap
to a falsely succesful zero.

diff --git a/man/mhparam.man b/man/mhparam.man
index 07da4ccd31d0f7f0276663f5d2d2c9b6e1650676..df1de43e5f7d250866bf73b1dc821c7a244137c1 100644 (file)
--- a/man/mhparam.man
+++ b/man/mhparam.man
@@ -153,7 +153,11 @@ is also useful in backquoted operations:
 .fi
 .SH "EXIT STATUS"
 .B mhparam
-returns the number of components that were not found.
+returns the number of components that were not found,
+but limits just the return value to 120 to avoid ambiguity,
+e.g.\& 127 is used by shells to indicate `command not found',
+and 256 would wrap to 0, falsely indicating success.
+.
 .SH FILES
 .fc ^ ~
 .nf

diff --git a/test/mhparam/test-mhparam b/test/mhparam/test-mhparam
index a75e19916111c044b294d8796ce65fac869df19f..a2130ba7f08655223e14589728165837d72ca06a 100755 (executable)
--- a/test/mhparam/test-mhparam
+++ b/test/mhparam/test-mhparam
@@ -165,6 +165,17 @@ mhparam path context nonexistent1 nonexistent2 nonexistent3 >/dev/null
 run_test "echo $?" 3
 set -e
 
+# And clips their numbers to avoid a misleading exit value.
+while read use want; do
+    r=0
+    mhparam `yes nonexistent | sed ${use}q` || r=$?
+    run_test "echo $r" $want
+done <<\E
+119 119
+120 120
+121 120
+E
+
 # mhparam -debug
 # Some of its output depends on configure options, so don't bother to
 # check for correctness here.

diff --git a/uip/mhparam.c b/uip/mhparam.c
index 242333407f893680a4656051aaa1b4f524b58718..c52410c0c17a17e763d3857649a7642b277f7cd2 100644 (file)
--- a/uip/mhparam.c
+++ b/uip/mhparam.c
@@ -250,7 +250,7 @@ main(int argc, char **argv)
                    printf("%s: ", comps[i]);
 
                puts(value);
-           } else
+           } else if (missed < 120)
                missed++;
        }
     }