According to perlfunc, “The return value is the exit status of the program as returned by the wait call. To get the actual exit value shift right by eight.”

Meanwhile, the documentation for wait states, “...returns the pid of the deceased process, or -1 if there are no child processes.”

So, is the return result from system the same as the value of $?, or something different?

If the number given in exit of the child process is found by shifting right by 8, what interesting thing is in the low bits?

How’s that work on Windows systems? The documentation is written with a Unix-centric point of view, with the assumption that system is written in terms of exec instead of vice-versa.

—John

In reply to return result from system ? by John M. Dlugosz

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