thanks for the help, I did add additional exit codes in the my child processes and it solved my problems (I posted code below)

in the end, I figured the easiest way is for the parent to keep track of the children's exit status; because in the end that's all I care about.

I don't have access to "update" my version of perl (or add modules), but I'm definitely going to look more into the IPC, it really interests me.

foreach $element (@updevices)
{
        @ip = split(':',$element);
        die "Could not fork()\n" unless defined ($pid = fork);
        if ($pid) { push @pids, $pid; next;}
        system("ping $ip[2] 2 > /dev/null");
        $result = $?;
        if ( $result !=  0)
        {
                print "$ip[0] is dead\n";
                exit 1;
        }
        exit 0;

}

for $pid(@pids){
          waitpid $pid, 0;
          if ($? != 0)
          {
             $i++;
          }
}

print "$i dead devices\n";

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In reply to Re^4: Problem with exit status of bash script by dizzyd719
in thread Problem with exit status of bash script by dizzyd719

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