Will someone please explain RESULT_FIRST_USER

Question

I don't understand the meaning, value, or importance of RESULT_FIRST_USER, other than that my own result codes must be greater than 1. Will someone please explain it? RESULT_OK and RESULT_CANCELED make perfect sense to an english speaker. But what in the world of android is RESULT_FIRST_USER? All the documentations says about it is

Start of user-defined activity results. 

Answer 1

The answer to the question is actually the combination of comments from @CommonsWare and @Chris. So, for the sake of progeny, I am going to consolidate the comments and make it available in one place.

Basically, there are two predefined constants for the requestCode and they are Activity.RESULT_OK and Activity.RESULT_CANCELLED. However, android developers can also set custom codes for their apps by using the offset Activity.RESULT_FIRST_USER. Doing so ensures that there are no clashes between constants set at the OS level and the app level.

Purely, my opinion, I think that the FIRST USER suffix is meant to refer to developers – just like how end consumer refers to consumers of a said product – who are the first users before the app users.

Below is an example of how you can use this offset,

public static final int MY_RESULT_CODE = Activity.RESULT_FIRST_USER + 1;