I am wrapping an external executable on Windows that can exit with codes bigger than 255. The issue I am facing is that Perl $? seems to be limited to the combination of one byte for the signal and another byte for the errorlevel. For instance, when the program exits with code 1000 (0x3E8), $? becomes 59392 (0xE800).

Perl has also the variable ${^CHILD_ERROR_NATIVE}, but it seems that on Windows it gets the same value as $?.

Does anybody known how to get the real exit code without reverting to using an external module as Win32::Process to start and control the slave processes? (on the other hand, I am already using Win32::API, so solutions using it would be acceptable).

In reply to Unaltered child return code on Windows by salva

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