Re: Error exits on busy systems

On Sat, Jul 10 2021, Denis Corbin wrote:

>> Fundamentally, I think it is good practice to always write 
>> shell scripts
>> with "set -eou pipefail" on (that is, abort with any nonzero 
>> exit code)
>
> applications. For that reason, having more than two exit codes 
> is much
> more robust than parsing, while using exit code with boolean 
> approach
> leads to very fragile scripts (they fail anytime you are not in 
> the
> perfect condition).

You make a very good point here.  We don't have a great way to 
indicate various kinds of status other than exit codes.

So that brings up the question: what exit codes should be taken as 
success in my particular case?  I know already 0 and 11.  I'm 
unsure about 5; I've definitely seen it in cases where I'd 
consider the backup to be a success, but the manpage also says 
"this is the case when a file could not be opened or read", 
implying possible I/O error or something.  Am I misreading that?

Thanks,

John