I think you're digging yourself a velvet-lined grave here.

Yes, for many Perl child programs, the trivial use of die in that child program propogates their errno to their exit code.

But for the rest of the real world, no such propogation ever takes place. I think if you survey the exit status of nearly all other programs, you'll find a simple +1 or -1 (255) exit status, which your code will correctly misinterpret. {grin}

So, feel free to post your code, but be sure the reader is clear that it is intended for Perl child processes only.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker