Exit codes now range from 0 to 255

This is in line with the supported range of bash exit codes:
http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/exitcodes.html

1 files changed, 19 insertions, 4 deletions

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index d265b58..46135ca 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -12,8 +12,8 @@ Git commit message linter written in python, checks your commit messages for sty
 Great for use as a ```commit-msg``` git hook or as part of your gating script in a CI/CD pipeline (e.g. jenkins).
 
 Many of the gitlint validations are based on
-[well-known](http://tbaggery.com/2008/04/19/a-note-about-git-commit-messages.html)
-[community](http://addamhardy.com/blog/2013/06/05/good-commit-messages-and-enforcing-them-with-git-hooks/)
+[well-known](http://tbaggery.com/2008/04/19/a-note-about-git-commit-messages.html),
+[community](http://addamhardy.com/blog/2013/06/05/good-commit-messages-and-enforcing-them-with-git-hooks/),
 [standards](http://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/), others are based on checks that we've found
 useful throughout the years. Gitlint has sane defaults, but you can also easily customize it to your own liking.
 
@@ -50,8 +50,7 @@ $ cat examples/commit-message-2 | gitlint
 3: B2 Line has trailing whitespace: "Lines typically need to have 	a max length, meaning that they can't exceed a preset number of characters, usually 80 or 120. "
 3: B3 Line contains hard tab characters (\t): "Lines typically need to have 	a max length, meaning that they can't exceed a preset number of characters, usually 80 or 120. "
 ```
-NOTE: The returned exit code equals the number of errors found. The exit code ```10000``` is used when gitlint hits a
-configuration error.
+NOTE: The returned exit code equals the number of errors found. [Some exit codes are special](README.md#exit-codes).
 
 You can modify verbosity using the ```-v``` flag, like so:
 ```bash
@@ -211,6 +210,22 @@ Important: Gitlint cannot work together with an existing hook. If you already ha
 file in your local repository, gitlint will refuse to install the ```commit-msg``` hook. gitlint will also only
 uninstall unmodified commit-msg hooks that were installed by gitlint.
 
+## Exit codes ##
+Gitlint uses the exit code as a simple way to indicate the number of violations found.
+Some exit codes are used to indicate special errors as indicated in the table below.
+
+Because of these special error codes and the fact that
+[bash only supports exit codes between 0 and 255](http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/exitcodes.html), the maximum number
+of violations counted by the exit code is 252. Note that gitlint does not have a limit on the number of violations
+it can detect, it will just always return with exit code 252 when the number of violations is greater than or equal
+to 252.
+
+Exit Code  | Description
+-----------|------------------------------------------------------------
+253        | Wrong invocation of the ```gitlint``` command.
+254        | Something went wrong when invoking git.
+255        | Invalid gitlint configuration
+
 ## Contributing ##
 
 We'd love for you to contribute to gitlint. Just open a pull request and we'll get right on it!