Exit Code

Noun · Development

Definitions

  1. A numeric value returned by a process to its parent when it terminates. By convention, 0 means success and any non-zero value indicates an error. Shell scripts and CI pipelines rely on exit codes to determine pass/fail.

    In plain English: A number a program gives back when it finishes — 0 means everything went fine, anything else means something went wrong.

    Example: "The build failed because the linter returned exit code 1, which the CI pipeline treats as a failure."

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