From: Bob Showalter <bob_showalter@...>
Date: 2005-12-16T06:44:04+09:00
Subject: Re: system() failed with $?==32512 <SOLVED>

Steve Litt wrote:
> On Thursday 15 December 2005 01:05 pm, Steve Litt wrote:
> 
>>Hi all,
>>
>>I have a program too large to post a code snippet, and my
>>system() call does not work. It returns false, and the $?
>>variable is set to 32512. Looking through various errno.h files,
>>I couldn't find a corresponding number. Ugh!
>>
>>I have a little hello world program that runs system() just fine.
>>Anyone know how to interprest the 32512? Anyone know how to find
>>an error message in English? Any other ideas to narrow the root
>>cause scope of this problem?
> 
> 
> Dooohhh! My ruby program, which is a menu system, first creates 
> script files and then runs them using system(). This is actually a 
> Ruby rewrite of my UMENU program.
> 
> Anyway, when coding it to construct the script I forgot to have it 
> create the shebang line (#!/bin/bash). Although such bash scripts 
> work just fine without the shebang when run from bash itself, of 
> course they fail when run via system() in Ruby.
> 
> I solved this by creating a short program that failed.

Note that 32512 is 127 << 8.

$? is actually a Process::Status object (in Ruby 1.8+)

The exit status is 127 and is coming from /bin/sh not being able to find 
the program to execute.