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Date:      Fri, 16 Jun 2000 06:36:30 -0700
From:      Dirk Myers <dirkm@teleport.com>
To:        Chris Fedde <chris@fedde.littleton.co.us>
Cc:        James Johnson <bonk1138@msn.com>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Error Codes
Message-ID:  <20000616063630.F17084@teleport.com>
In-Reply-To: <200006160513.e5G5DN184066@fedde.littleton.co.us>; from chris@fedde.littleton.co.us on Thu, Jun 15, 2000 at 11:13:23PM -0600
References:  <NPEMLFGPEFGMNHHEJKEHCEHICAAA.bonk1138@msn.com> <200006160513.e5G5DN184066@fedde.littleton.co.us>

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An infinite number of monkeys (collectively referred to 
as "Chris Fedde") flailed at their keyboards, producing:

> On Thu, 15 Jun 2000 20:45:29 -0700  "James Johnson" wrote:
>  +------------------
>  | Hello,
>  | 	I'm coming from an NT background, where "error codes" are used to descr
> ibe
>  | events. Does FreeBSD have a similar model? If so, Where can I got to pick up
>  | a list of definitions?
>  | 
>  | Thanks
>  +------------------
> 
> One the disadvantages of opensource development is that there is
> little if any coordination of messages generated by applications.
> Thus there is no "list" of all the messages that a given freebsd
> system might generate.

For error codes returned by the actual system libraries, the macros
mapping the mnemonic to the number are in /usr/include/errno.h 
(e.g., this is where ENOENT gets defined to be 2).  There are very brief
descriptions of the errors in that file; the man page for the function
being called should more completely specify what a given error means
in a certain context.

For user-level applications, don't forget that the source is available
for the majority of the applications you're likely to install on a
FreeBSD system, and you can use that to determine what a particular
error means in a particular context.  (This sounds like a major PITA
the first time you hear it -- at least it did to me -- but it's
actually more useful than I expected with well-written code.
Look at the man page for grep for how to find bits of text in files.)

Dirk	   dirkm@teleport.com
--  
It's almost like we're doing Windows users a favor by charging
them money for something they could get for free, because
they get confused otherwise. -- Larry Wall


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