I seem to have found a way to get $? to always return -1 (even on the date command)! What's up with this?

Try this test program on *nix and see if it happens to you too...

my $ret1 = `date`;
my $exit1 = $?;
print STDERR "exit1=$exit1 ret1=$ret1";

my $pid;
if($pid = fork) {
    $SIG{CHLD} = sub {wait};
    print STDERR "$$: parent pid=$pid\n";
}elsif (defined $pid) {
    print STDERR "$$: child\n";
    setpgrp(0, $$);
    exec "exec sleep 500 &" || die "Bad exec $!";
    exit;
}

foreach my $i (1..5) {
    my $ret2 = `date`;
    my $exit2 = $?;
    print STDERR "exit2=$exit2 ret2=$ret2";
}

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In reply to $? stuck returning -1... by cmv

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