> I don't really know the answer to your question but it's probably lurking in
> the following section of perl.h. It appears to be converting VMS condition
> codes to some other (POSIX?) exit statuses. In pp_sys.c there is a call to
> STATUS_NATIVE_SET with the return value of Perl_do_spawn(). What I find
> particulary puzzling here is that after extracting the severity bits (0-2)
> the result is shifted left by 8. How can the VMS severity bits have any
> meaning when shoved up one byte?
The shift is an attempt to accomodate POSIX semantics for subprocess
termination values returned to wait(), which call for the low-order
byte to contain flags, and the higher-order bits to contain the actual
exit status of the subprocess. Since I couldn't preserve the whole
VMS status value after the shift, I at least tried to hang onto the
severity info without creating a spurious (partial) VMS status value.
If the caller really wants to know what happened, it's best to go
for the real VMS status; the default behavior was at the insistence
of the POSIX police for the sake of portability.
Regards,
Charles Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED]
