Perl apology -- and enhancement

[Larry Wall]

In article <1231 at zen.UUCP> vic at zen.UUCP (Victor Gavin) writes:
: Whilst I'm here, for anyone that's interested, here's some code that will fix
: (system "/bin/sh -c 'exit 1'") so that it returns 1 and not 256:

PLEASE DO NOT APPLY THIS PATCH!  The return value of 1 should indicate
that the shell died of being sent a HUP signal.  To get the status value
as returned by the program, do a >>8.  I do believe this is documented.

Even if you think this behavior is wrong, please don't make your perl
incompatible with everyone else's.  Some poor critter on your machine is
going to write a script that depends on it and then post it to the world.
Critter will then get fried in a semi-unjustified manner.

Your's for a less desperate world,

Larry Wall
lwall at jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov