[Toybox] Testing: how to check return code

[Jarno Mäkipää]

Hi

Tested ls with invalid options on freebsd and it returns only 0 or 1
and never 2. And quick look at source confirms my test... So returning
2 is gnuism.

I dont see any actual use case for writing script with invalid
argument and checking specific return code?

On Mon, Nov 4, 2019 at 3:07 AM Rob Landley <rob at landley.net> wrote:
>
> On 10/30/19 1:56 PM, enh via Toybox wrote:
> >> I am with you enh. In this case, I wanted the error code because
> >> GNU `ls` says the command can exit with { 0, 1, 2 }.
> >> https://linux.die.net/man/1/ls
> >> POSIX says exit status is { 0, >0 }
> >> https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/
> >> In this case which specification wins?
> >
> > they're both true, but the GNU ls is more specific :-)
>
> Hmmm, I need to add http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/dir_section_1.html to the
> roadmap, don't I? Except a quick cut and paste pipe through wc says there's just
> under 1500 entries in there...
>
> >> enh, the other week you mentioned Android will not use the build if
> >> there are failing tests.
> >
> > correct. that's why i'm a bit behind --- xargs is still failing.
>
> I thought I checked in your 4k workaround last week? (Commit f95d580892e2 ?)
>
> Hmmm, just did a "git push" and it found stuff... (Sorry, Japan's been as busy
> as you'd expect.)
>
> >> Does the above apply to `TEST_HOST=1
> >> make tests`? If so, then I will rewrite the test.
> >
> > not at the moment, no, but you probably want `SKIP_HOST=1` before the
> > affected `testing` (but on the same line so it doesn't apply to later
> > instances)?
>
> I'm trying to migrate from SKIP_HOST to toyonly, because you could in theory
> have toybox on the host and the decision we're really making is "this is known
> to work in toybox, but not anywhere else".
>
> Note: toyonly is a shell function that does an eval on its arguments instead of
> an environment variable that signals the plumbing to make a decision, so it's
> called slightly differently. But there should be a few examples in the tree...
>
> > or fix ls to behave like the host. see grep for a similar example.
> > (or, generally, grep for `exitval`.)
>
> I still wince at being too specific in the tests, but if there are actual
> examples of scripts caring about this level of detail and being broken by not
> getting it right... then the help text output should probably mention the error
> codes.
>
> And _possibly_ we should work out some standard behavior to enforce across the
> commands? If "0" and "1" determine the result of a test (like cmp), neither of
> which is actually an error, then "2" being the default _error_ value everywhere
> might make sense? (But would we then break scripts expecting 1?)
>
> I'm uncomfortable whack-a-moling this. I kinda want a rule.
>
> Rob
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