I am pretty sure exit status codes are limited to 8 bits -- see this Wikipedia article: Exit status

That's why a status of -1 is showing up as 255.

Trying this: bash -c 'exit -1' produces the error Illegal number: -1, so I doubt status codes are meant to be interpreted as signed integers.

In reply to Re: negative exit codes? by pc88mxer
in thread negative exit codes? by wscott44

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