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From: Adam Beneschan <adam@irvine.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: How to exit an Ada program with (unix shell) error code?
Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 15:55:39 -0700 (PDT)
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Date: 2009-05-12T15:55:39-07:00
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On May 8, 3:17 am, a...@anon.org (anon) wrote:

[Note: I was out of town for a long weekend, for Mother's Day, and saw
this post just today.]

> Now, in the case of, Ada.Command_Line, RM A.15 (21) states:
>
> 21  An alternative declaration is allowed for package Command_Line if
> different functionality is appropriate for the external execution
> environment.

OK, I wasn't aware of this.  But it doesn't help your case any.  In
the post to which I was responding, you said:

"And since there are times where the Ada.Command_Line package is
not available, there has to be a way to send a 'exit status' to the OS
in those case."

If the OS is such that it expects programs to return an exit status,
then certainly an alternative (or omitted) declaration of
Ada.Command_Line that did not support Set_Exit_Status would not be
"appropriate for the external execution environment".  (It would only
be appropriate in cases where there is no real OS, or if there's a
bare-bones OS that does not care about exit statuses.)  I think the
point you're trying to make is that the language should *require*
support for parameterless functions as main programs, but you still
haven't demonstrated your point; ignoring cases where the vendor just
plain screws up by providing an inappropriate version of Command_Line,
you have not shown that there is ever a need to support main programs
of this form.

                              -- Adam