error messages (was Re: friendly messages)

[Guy Harris]

>I don't know about System V, but under BSD systems, including <errno.h>
>gives you not only perror() but a sys_errlist[] of error message texts.

This dates back long before BSD; it's a V7ism, and present in any modern
UNIX worthy of the name. 

>  char *err(errno)

Call it "strerror" instead - the ANSI C draft does.

>Some say that the error message facility should automatically print the
>program name for you, and others say that the wave of ANSI/the future
>is to include info/warning/verybad/fatal/endoftheworld;

I don't know about the wave of the future, but the (draft) ANSI C
standard says nothing about info/warning/...; POSIX P1003.1, which at
least at one point touted itself as a draft American National Standard -
although the final P1003.1 doesn't do so - says nothing about it either,
so I don't think it's the wave of ANSI.

It may show up in S5R4, but if so it'll probably let you turn off stuff
such as that if you don't want to see it.