Hello wise monks,

I want to check the process exit status of a child program (child.pl) from my parent program. (parent.pl)

parent.pl:

my $exit_status = system("child.pl");
print "Exit Status: $exit_status\n";
[download]

child.pl:

exit(2);
[download]

The strange thing is that in the parent program the process exit code seems to be multiplicated with 256.

So in this example the printed process exit code is 512 and not 2 as I would have expected.

If I change the parent program as follows, then I get the desired result:

parent_changed.pl:

my $exit_status = system("child.pl");
$exit_status /= 256;
print "Exit Status: $exit_status\n";
[download]

My question is: Why is the process exit code, when I get in the parent program a multiple of 256 of the real process exit code of the child program?

Thank you.

Greetings,

Dirk

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