Why is the exit code -1 in the first one-liner? I would have expected it to be the same as the second one-liner. 
>perl -e '$code=system("exit 3"); print("Finished with $? (or ",$?>>8,
+") $code (or ",$code>>8,")\n");'
Finished with -1 (or 72057594037927935) -1 (or 72057594037927935)
>perl -e '$code=system("ps > /dev/null;exit 3"); print("Finished with 
+$? (or ",$?>>8,") $code (or ",$code>>8,")\n");'
Finished with 768 (or 3) 768 (or 3)

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Background: I have a script that does a fork and a system call (followed by an exit with the system's return code) in the child and the parent eventually (after some other stuff) calls waitpid($pid,0) (possibly after the child has exited). I didn't know why I was getting -1, thus the sanity check above. It may not be an apples to apples comparison, but in either case, I don't undersstand what is going on.

In reply to Why is this exit code -1? by hepcat72

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