The result of a system call should be 0 if the command completed successfully. Otherwise, you need to examine (as you were doing) the $? variable to get the exit status of the script. See the documentation for system for information on how to make sense of this number (it does not immediately equal the exit status of the child process).

If you're trying to get the exit status of your child processes (after you fork), you need to examine $? after your wait or waitpid calls (when you reap your child processes).

If you're consistently getting -1 with system and $?, regardless of whether or not there was an error, I would say that's odd and that something is not as you say it is. Test your assumptions again.

In reply to Re: Capturing Errors from Forked Processes by Fastolfe
in thread Capturing Errors from Forked Processes by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.