Handle Defensive Programming in C/C++ function libraries

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Defensive Programming

The point of view taken on DP here, is the one present in C/C++ libraries (and many others) in which the client of a function (or module) is required to immediately put code to handle the error in order to ensure a correct and robust program (checked exceptions in Java is another example of this pernicious practice). That is the case of all functions that return a special value to indicate an error (for instance: -1 in the fork system call).