Re^3: What is a successful return status for perl wait() in Solaris?

So does 256 exit status means a successful exit of the child process?
No, you cannot exit with 256 from UNIX, only 0-255. However, if you are talking about $?, that is a different matter. As others have said, $? contains many things other than just the return code. If the child process terminated because of a signal then the signal number is in $? as well.

$exit_value    = $? >> 8; 
$signal_num    = $? & 127;
$dumped_core    = $? & 128;
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I think there has been some confusion over what you mean by an exit value.

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Re^4: What is a successful return status for perl wait() in Solaris? by Anonymous Monk on Nov 26, 2008 at 19:49 UTC
Does that mean waitpid() for a process id $pid forked by a fork command can expect a return code ( $? ) more than 255. I believe waitpid() should expect $? to be any value between 0-255 ( i. e. the child process (with $pid ) should always exit with a value between 0-255. ) Please clarify my doubt.	[reply]
Re^4: What is a successful return status for perl wait() in Solaris? by kduong (Initiate) on Feb 01, 2008 at 17:43 UTC
So does exit value 256 means a successful exit?	[reply]