EXIT_SUCCESS(3const)

💖 EXIT_SUCCESS — the const girlies of process termination 💖

okay bestie, so this is EXIT_SUCCESS(3const) — a page from the <pink>3const</pink> corner of the manual, and honestly? it's giving tiny-but-mighty. two constants. that's the whole page. and yet they run the entire exit-code economy. periodt.

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✨ NAME ✨

EXIT_SUCCESS, EXIT_FAILURE — termination status constants 🎀

📚 LIBRARY 📚

Standard C library (libc) 🫶

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

#include <stdlib.h>

#define EXIT_SUCCESS  0
#define EXIT_FAILURE  /* nonzero */

like... look at that. EXIT_SUCCESS is literally just 0. no cap. and EXIT_FAILURE is <hotpink>/* nonzero */</hotpink> — the manpage is out here being coy about it, which is honestly iconic behaviour. 🦋

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

so here's the vibe: EXIT_SUCCESS and EXIT_FAILURE represent a successful and unsuccessful exit status respectively. that's the whole personality. they're the two moods you can leave a program in.

and you can use them as arguments to the exit(3) function — that's their main character moment, that's their whole reason for existing, and they absolutely ate. 👑

⭐ STANDARDS ⭐

C11, POSIX.1-2024 🧚

🕰️ HISTORY 🕰️

the lore, bestie:

• EXIT_SUCCESS — C89, POSIX.1-1988 ✨
• EXIT_FAILURE — C89, POSIX.1-1990 ✨

not the two of them having different POSIX years. EXIT_SUCCESS was out here first, fr fr. 🙈

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

here's the whole thing in context, a cute lil program that opens a file and bails properly if anything goes sideways:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    FILE *fp;

    if (argc != 2) {
        fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s <file>\n", argv[0]);
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    fp = fopen(argv[1], "r");
    if (fp == NULL) {
        perror(argv[1]);
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    /* Other code omitted */

    fclose(fp);
    exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}

see how it goes? wrong number of args → exit(EXIT_FAILURE). file won't open → exit(EXIT_FAILURE). everything works → fclose(fp) and then exit(EXIT_SUCCESS). sweet and simple, and the /* Other code omitted */ is doing a LOT of heavy lifting in there, love that for it. 💀

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

• exit(3)
• sysexits.h(3head)

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that's the page!! short, sweet, and lowkey the most-used constants in the whole C library. iykyk. 💜

with love from the Linux man-pages, version 6.20, dated 2026-02-08 — mwah, go exit cleanly bestie 🫶✨