Maybe I wasn't clear enough, my posting was referring to situations in which one has to "glue" together the execution of multiple scripts, not necessarily all of them written in Rebol. A motivation could be legacy applications (if we call "legacy" whatever is already there and we won't/can't modify/rewrite). To give a real example, I need to integrate a number of Perl scripts with Rebol scripts; I'm doing that via a main shell script - though this detail is not relevant. In my case it's not a question of legacy software - I had to write some pieces in Perl because I need to access a RDBMS, something I can't do today in Rebol. So the "driver" script (the high-level shell script in my case) needs to know what's going on with the execution of the Perl and Rebol scripts. Perl poses non problem, but with Rebol I can't use the same mechanism. Of course I can have it worked out - I was wondering if anybody else felt my same need. I think the matter may be considered on the level of "design principles" or, in some sense, on the "philosophycal" side of what one expects from a programming language... Ciao Mauro [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Mauro wrote: > > My question of the day is: what mechanism can be used to > (programmatically) test whether the execution of a Rebol script has been > successful or not? > > >> S1: [print "This is S1" true] > == [print "This is S1" true] > >> do s1 > This is S1 > == true > >> S2: [print "This is S2" false] > == [print "This is S2" false] > >> do s2 > This is S2 > == false > > >> SE: [print a string that is not in double quotes true] > == [print a string that is not in double quotes true] > >> either error? Result: try [do SE][print "There was an error?"][print "All > OK!"] > There was an error? > >> either error? Result: try [do S2][print "There was an error?"][print "All > OK!"] > This is S2 > All OK! > >> either error? Result: try [do S1][print "There was an error?"][print "All > OK!"] > This is S1 > All OK! > > I hope that helps! :-D > > Andrew Martin > ICQ: 26227169 > http://members.xoom.com/AndrewMartin/ > -><- > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Thursday, 24 February 2000 10:31 PM > Subject: [REBOL] Script return code > > First of all, thanks to everybody who promptly answered my former question > on email attachments. > My question of the day is: what mechanism can be used to (programmatically) > test whether the execution of a Rebol script has been successful or not? > If I'm right, a script has no way to return an "exit code" which would > provide the usual mechanism found on Unix. While it is true that the script > might output the equivalent of a return code, this works fine provided that > the script doesn't do any other kind of output. In other words, it'd be > suitable for batch-oriented scripts which don't write anything else on > stdout/stderr. > In my opinion, the formalized notion of a return code is essential, > especially when one has to "glue" together scripts and/or applications and > drive their execution by means of a higher-level program (e.g., a shell > script), taking into account failures etc. The presence of the return code > should also be transparent to the user, i.e. it shouldn't interfere with the > execution of the script (like altering its output). > Any idea of why such a feature hasn't been incorporated in the language? > Concerning cross-platform portability, a solution a la exit() is as portable > as C. > Thanks for your help, > Mauro
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