Answers:

• Sudo should return the exit value of the command that was run.

  $ sudo perl -e 'exit 3'
  $ echo $?
  3
  [download]

  A better example might be:

  $ perl -le '`sudo perl -e "exit 3"`; print $?>>8'
  3
  [download]

• Are you sure that is CHILD_ERROR you are looking at and not ERRNO? The reason I ask is twofold. The first is that $? should be numeric. The second is that I've often seen $! being set to "Illegal Seek" after a successful backtick command. I think it has to do with how perl implements the backticks. (Specifically, I think it attempts to do a seek on the pipe. I have no idea why though.) In any case, it doesn't much matter because $! isn't really applicable unless the return value extracted from $? is -1.

• That depends...

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

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