I'm seeking validation that the child exit within an eval can/should cause a parent to also exit.
Regardless of whatever my reply to this might be it will be a rater loose assertion as this is largely dependant on particular system you are talking about. The original author of the script might have gone through a certain design process and concluded that to do things certain way is most appropriate.
However, from my personal experience, I'd rarely if ever follow the suit. I'd generally try to keep the parent alive nontheless and simply log an error message to a file where it could be picked up by say a monitoring agent (such as Big Sister, for instance). Unless the exit of the child process is not due to a crytical malfunction, there's hardly any need to cause the whole process to collapse.
_____________________
# Under Construction