close on a pipe to another process will return a false value if the process did not exit normally. In that case, either $! will be set to some internal error that prevented you from running the process or $? will be set to the exit status of the process. See the documentation for wait() for information on how to extract what exit status to use from $?.

The status you get from a child says:

• Did the process die from a signal?
• If so what signal and did it dump core?
• If not, what number did it exit with?

If the process just exited with a non-zero value, then you can exit with the same value. If the process died from a signal, then you could try killing yourself with a signal and hope you also die and hope that you either core dump or don't just like the other process.

If the other process was run from the shell, then you get the exit status of the shell. This usually (varies by shell) tries to summarize the exit status of the child by using special exit values to indicate death by signal. But you can easily lose some information in the translation.

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")