The exit status is a value of your choice. If you call your program and then react based on the exit value returned after it has finished execution, you are free to handle them as you wish.
There is only one general rule, which is that exit status 0 assumes that your program completed without error. Furthermore a negative exit status is usually assumed to be a termination because of an unexpected error, while a positive exit status is assumed to be a (more or less) graceful termination.
But again: if there is no batch file calling your code, no one will ever react on the exit status, and therefore you can return whatever you want, it will have no effect.