On Sunday, Jun 8, 2003, at 08:58 US/Pacific, Robin wrote:
On Thursday, June 5, 2003, at 03:36 am, Dan Mills wrote:[..]
[..]It's unfortunate that mail exits with 0, however. I was burned by this
not very long ago (ran M-x mail in emacs for a quick mail, no error,
never got there. Eventually I ran mailq and realized sendmail wasn't
setup properly).
It isn't mail's fault, though. sendmail returns with 0 as well.
I've come accross this before, it's a UNIX C-ism which return 0 instead - historically any other return value would be an error code, see quotes below for clarifiaction
close but not quite the issue.
mail, mailx, et al 'ran successfully' - and hence should exit with '0' - because they ran successfully.
The problem is that mail is not required to know if sendmail, smail, procmail, WhatEver MTA, works appropriately.
It might have been nice, but it is not required in the original spec.
Nor is there a requirement for mail, mailx, et al, to know what happens on the other side of the sendmail process at the remote host, etc, etc, etc....
ciao drieux
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