On Oct 23, 2013, at 12:56 AM, Shaji Kalidasan wrote: > Dear Perlers > > Please throw some light on the $? variable > > I am trying to figure out how the internal structure (format) of $? variable. > Please throw some light on this topic.
The content of $? is explained in the perlvar document. Type 'perldoc perlvar' and search for 'CHILD_ERROR': $CHILD_ERROR $? The status returned by the last pipe close, backtick ("``") command, successful call to "wait()" or "waitpid()", or from the "system()" operator. This is just the 16-bit status word returned by the traditional Unix "wait()" system call (or else is made up to look like it). Thus, the exit value of the subprocess is really ("$? >> 8"), and "$? & 127" gives which signal, if any, the process died from, and "$? & 128" reports whether there was a core dump. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-unsubscr...@perl.org For additional commands, e-mail: beginners-h...@perl.org http://learn.perl.org/