From 4ef107a6cabd33854b770659cca90f12a2326104 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Dave Mitchell <davem@fdisolutions.com>
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2003 22:56:20 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] [DOC PATCH] Re: [perl #23779] $? and negative exit codes
 Message-ID: <20030916205620.GB1246@fdgroup.com>

p4raw-id: //depot/perl@21253
---
 pod/perlfunc.pod | 14 +++++++++++---
 1 file changed, 11 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/pod/perlfunc.pod b/pod/perlfunc.pod
index d7a3fa4..fff672b 100644
--- a/pod/perlfunc.pod
+++ b/pod/perlfunc.pod
@@ -5745,9 +5745,17 @@ your program.
 You can check all the failure possibilities by inspecting
 C<$?> like this:
 
-    $exit_value  = $? >> 8;
-    $signal_num  = $? & 127;
-    $dumped_core = $? & 128;
+    if ($? == -1) {
+	print "failed to execute: $!\n";
+    }
+    elsif ($? & 127) {
+	printf "child died with signal %d, %s coredump\n",
+	    ($? & 127),  ($? & 128) ? 'with' : 'without';
+    }
+    else {
+	printf "child exited with value %d\n", $? >> 8;
+    }
+
 
 or more portably by using the W*() calls of the POSIX extension;
 see L<perlport> for more information.
-- 
2.7.4