# No shell involved, and the child died from SIGPIPE:
$ perl -e'open(PS,"ls . |") or die "$!"; close PS or die $!; printf("%04X\n", $?);'
000D

# The shell relaying how its child died via its exit code:
$ perl -e'open(PS,"ls . 2>/dev/null |") or die "$!"; close PS or die $!; printf("%04X\n", $?);'
8D00