Some of the LINPACK subroutines use the argument INFO to return information about whether or not the requested operation completed successfully. The subroutines do not use INFO consistently, so you must read the description of a particular subroutine to determine how it interprets INFO. Many of the subroutines do not have a status argument and simply generate an arithmetic error such as divide by zero if one or more of the operands are not set up satisfactorily. Most of the operating systems and run-time systems on machines in use at the time that LINPACK was developed would abort a program that got an arithmetic exception. IEEE arithmetic in common use today simply records arithmetic exceptions in a status register and continues running. This may mean that errors, especially in programs ported from older operating environments, will go undetected by the program.